When people donate to the March of Dimes, they expect that their donations will go to help babies. Instead, the March of Dimes has bankrolled dozens of experiments using primates, cats, dogs, rabbits, sheep, and countless other animals.
In one experiment funded by the March of Dimes, kittens’ eyes were sewn shut, they were left in horrifying conditions for a year, and then they were killed, despite the fact that it was already well established that humans’ and nonhumans’ optical development is so fundamentally different as to render the findings of this study meaningless.
March of Dimes-funded experimenters have kept monkeys in restraints for days at a time, given ferrets and other animals severe brain damage, and wasted millions of dollars addicting pregnant rats and newborn opossums to nicotine, cocaine, and alcohol, even though we have known for years that these substances can harm a developing baby.
The March of Dimes has taken in close to $1 billion at WalkAmerica events since they began in 1970, yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates for many birth defects have gone up.
Birth defects are prevented and babies are saved when research dollars go to effective and relevant research, which comes from studying human problems in human babies, not from sewing kittens’ eyes shut or addicting rats to cocaine.
Animal experiments harm humans as well as animals. Through the years, animal tests have often led scientists in the wrong direction, thus holding back medical progress and prolonging human suffering.
Many charities, including Easter Seals, Birth Defect Research for Children, Child Health Foundation, and the Heimlich Foundation, put all their funds into programs that directly benefit families affected by birth defects and never waste a penny on cruel animal experiments. Forward-thinking health charities fund humane, modern, and effective non-animal research — such as human cell and tissue cultures, complex computer modeling and scanning techniques, and human epidemiological studies—as well as administering care to people who are already sick.
