Heart Failure Experiments in Animals Fail
Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection - An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Physicians Committee
July 2019

Dog experiments don’t improve human health...

“Heart failure experiments on dogs have failed to find treatments for patients. It’s time to halt the dead-end dog experiments and switch to research that will benefit people.”
- John Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., Director of Academic Affairs, Physicians Committee

After more than two decades of heart failure experiments on dogs, Wayne State University in Detroit has made no medical advances to help the millions of Americans suffering from heart disease.

Despite evidence that the dog experiments don’t help human health, Wayne State experimenters collect almost $400,000 in funding every year to put dogs through multiple surgeries, artificially create heart failure, and force them to run on treadmills. As many as 25 percent of the dogs die during or after surgery—before the experiments are completed. All of the dogs who make it through the experiments are then killed.

Rogue, a hound, was used in experiments at Wayne State. Her chest and abdomen were opened and nine devices were implanted. She was forced to run on a treadmill just four days after major surgery. Within months she died. Rogue’s short life didn’t lead to treatments for people suffering from heart disease. Yet dogs are still used in these experiments. Since 2001, more than $5.4 million in taxpayer funding—doled out by the National Institutes of Health—have gone to these experiments.

The Physicians Committee has worked with doctors and scientists—through legal complaints, billboards, extensive media coverage, and protests—to put an end to the experiments. The experiments have even draw criticism from one of the university’s own faculty members, cardiologist and clinical professor of medicine Joel Kahn, M.D., F.A.C.C.

Epidemiological studies, such as the Framingham Study and Methodist Study, continue to give researchers insight into the causes of heart failure, while human clinical trials provide treatment and prevention options.

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