The Los Angeles Times just reported on White Coat Waste Project’s first big victory against the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (V.A.) taxpayer-funded dog experiments, stating that “the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center has halted planned tests on narcoleptic dogs.”

Following a WCW exposé and thanks to the swift actions taken by Members of Congress and more than 300,000 citizens who don’t want their tax dollars spent on cruel and wasteful animal experiments, the LA V.A. is canceling a deadly experiment on two dozen Dobermans and an associated 20-year-old breeding program that supplied dogs for the horrific studies.

Here is the full LA Times article:

After questions from California members of Congress, the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center has halted planned tests on narcoleptic dogs.

In a May letter to the Veterans Affairs inspector general, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and eight members of Los Angeles’ congressional delegation demanded to know more about the experiment, including how much it could cost and what other experiments the Los Angeles VA was conducting on animals.

The proposed experiment would have involved giving 18 narcoleptic Dobermans antidepressants or methamphetamine, then killing the dogs and studying how the drugs affect the production of histamines — the body’s response to allergens — in their brains. The animal rights group White Coat Waste Project, which obtained a 2016 research application for the experiment through a Freedom of Information Act request, brought the approved experiment to the attention of lawmakers.

“A research proposal for breeding and studying these dogs was approved through VA’s Merit Review and the national Office of Research and Development recently,” the VA said in a statement to the members of Congress. “It would have involved giving therapeutic doses of the drugs used to manage narcolepsy in humans, and would have required euthanasia; however the researcher has no current plans to breed further and it is expected the study will not be done.”

The facility has been conducting similar tests for two decades, but the VA said in the statement it has been years since an animal was euthanized.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), one of the members who sent the May letter, said he is relieved the experiments have ended.

“This much needed reform will put the Los Angeles VA back on track to taking care of our veterans without wasting resources to conduct unnecessary and inhumane experiments on dogs,” Lieu said in a statement.

Now that the Los Angeles VA is stopping its dog experiments, there are only three V.A. facilities still subjecting dogs to painful experiments. Let’s build on this momentum! Please email your congress members now.