dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Science has a specific breed of beagle that's bread only by researchers, for research purposes. Accuracy of conclusion requires religious adherence to using only these dogs, so that all experiment are well-"controlled".

The first institution, anywhere in the world, that intentionally decided to experiment on beagles, specifically, was the University of Utah. The first eight beagles were purchased by the University of Utah on April 3, 1951, from Mr. A Clyde Clark, a dog breeder in Weston, West Virginia who was affiliated with the “West Fork Beagle Club.” Several more beagles were procured from various backyard breeders in the Salt Lake City area. By March 1, 1952, the University had acquired a total of 61 beagles for breeding, and the breeding program started immediately. Dogs were bred after their first estrus, and laboratory personnel performed cesarean sections on the beagles the moment the in utero puppies were viable. This allowed the mothers to be quickly re-impregnated “in order to obtain a maximal yield of puppies.”

By June 1953, the colony had already grown to 175 beagles. By 1955, there were 309 beagles in a space designed for no more than 200 dogs. Laboratory personnel described the conditions as “seriously overcrowded.” To contain costs, the dogs were fed horse meat. By 1960, more than 671 beagle puppies had been bred for use in the University of Utah’s deadly radioactive toxicity experiments. All 671 were bred from just 32 breeding pairs.

The dogs at the University of Utah were being used in Atomic Energy Commission-funded tests, known as “The Beagle Project.” All of the beagles were injected with plutonium, a highly toxic radionuclide. Some of the dogs were injected with highly toxic doses, and they were all allowed to suffer the painful effects of radiation poisoning without any anesthesia. Bone tumors, gross skeletal disfigurations, tooth loss, and “spontaneous” fractures were some of the most frequent harmful effects seen in the high-dose dogs. The beagles who received the highest dose of radium had an average of more than 20 fractures per dog (compared with zero fractures in the control groups.) The fractures could occur just about anywhere in the dogs’ bodies. Fractures of the jaw, cheek, ribs, legs, or spine were all observed. Because the experimenters were most keenly interested in knowing how exposure to radioactive substances affected lifespan, dogs who were suffering severely were not even given the mercy of euthanasia.

In April 1956, the university scored its first major national media exposure when the magazine Mechanix Illustrated ran a feature about the laboratory titled “These Dogs Are Really ‘Hot.’” The magazine contained the statement “[d]og lovers need not fret – tests are painless; no dogs have died,” which was incorrect, as several dogs had already died, and many more dogs were clearly dying.

https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/nuclear-history-of-lab-beagles/