Taxpayer money being wasted on shocking animal experimentation

When I worked for Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., he had a soft spot in his heart for animals. Smith was known as a tough conservative who was willing to fight for what he believed in. The senator from New Hampshire had many causes. One was to develop a robust space-based missile defense system to protect the United States from attack – a fight on that issue continues today. Another was showing compassion to those who have no voice.

Smith told the Manchester Union Leader in an interview on November 21, 2002, that he was proud to have shown “compassion for animals.” Smith fought to provide chimpanzees who were the subject of government testing a place to live out their lives, instead of having them killed after testing was complete. The Capitol used to host a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus event every year where they paraded circus elephants. Smith fought to end that practice.

I learned much from Sen. Bob Smith and that is why I was outraged to learn that our government is engaging in wasteful and inhumane, animal experimentation that is unnecessary and horrifying. These are some of the same abusive practices that Sen. Smith fought while he was a member.

Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican political strategist and president of the conservative taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, wrote in The Hill that:

“right now, the VA doles out more than $1,600 to purchase 6-month-old beagles, hounds or mixed-breed dogs. The white coats at the VA then spend hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars to surgically induce heart attacks by injecting latex into the puppies’ arteries and then stressing their damaged hearts by forcing them to run on a treadmill. Congress members have noted that some of the experiments are placed in the government’s ‘maximum pain’ category because the dogs’ pain and distress are left unrelieved. The VA then sticks a needle in them, cuts their hearts out and tosses their bodies in the trash.”