In a new video for PETA, the host of HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher, unleashes some real talk to Texas A&M University, denouncing its muscular dystrophy (MD) experiments on golden retrievers and other dogs.
In the video, he calls on viewers to put pressure on the college until it stops funding the experiments by Joe Kornegay — a man Maher calls “dogs’ worst enemy.”
“For 35 years, experimenter Joe Kornegay has been using public money — yours and mine — to … [make] dogs sick with a debilitating, incurable disease that ravages their bones and bodies,” Maher explains in the video, which goes on to reveal how dogs used in Kornegay’s experiments were fed a watery gruel because it was difficult for them to eat without choking. “It’s as if Oliver Twist wandered into the Island of Doctor Moreau.”
The eyewitness footage of the labs shows thin dogs with disease-ravaged bodies struggling to walk, swallow, and even breathe because of their swollen tongues and weakened jaw muscles, with strings of saliva hanging from their mouths. Dogs without symptoms but who carried the gene for the disease were kept caged and used for breeding, and they restlessly paced and gnawed at the cage bars.
“This shouldn’t be happening to dogs, but it is,” Maher concludes. “This cruel, irresponsible, and fruitless waste of money must be stopped and the resources put to better use — supporting studies that don’t abuse helpless, trusting dogs.”
PETA notes that no applicable cure for humans with MD has been discovered in over 35 years of experimentation on dogs. Maher joins Miami Dolphins quarterback and TAMU alumnus Ryan Tannehill in urging the university to put a stop to these tests and adopt the dogs out to loving families.
