Broken Bond:

The Use of Dogs in Laboratory Experiments in the U.S.

By Crystal Miller-Spiegel

Dogs and humans have interacted for roughly 15,000 years, and today in the U.S., we know and identify with dogs perhaps more than any other animal. We refer to dogs as our ‘best friends,’ companions who provide unconditional love, who greet us, tails wagging, at the door, at the end of a long day, and who offer comfort at times when we are alone. We dote on them as we do children. We tell them aloud that we love them and buy toys, treats, clothes, and accessories for them. We celebrate their birthdays and give them gifts.

Yet, every day in the U.S., dogs just like those who share our homes and sleep in our beds are used in harmful and deadly experiments, treated as expendable ‘tools’ or ‘models’ in laboratories. In the U.S. alone, approximately 77,906 dogs were used in or bred for laboratory experiments in 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This reality is hard for many people to accept and is one of the driving forces behind those who share our goal. In fact, even before she founded AAVS in 1883, Caroline Earle White’s first anti-vivisection initiative focused on protecting the dogs under her care at the Philadelphia pound from being taken and used in experiments.

This article will summarize facilities using dogs in experiments in recent years, how facilities obtain dogs, and some common areas of research and testing in which dogs are currently being used.

Sources of Dogs

Many dogs are still obtained from shelters, animal control facilities, and/or other random sources, including ‘free to a good home’ ads, auctions, and greyhound racetracks. Animal dealers who buy and/or breed dogs and other animals need only register with the USDA, abide by minimal standards of care, and keep a paper trail of how they obtained the dogs and to whom they were sold. Many other dogs are bred either in laboratories (to be born either healthy or with a specific genetic defect) or by private companies that sell strictly to laboratories. Some animal dealers offer online catalogs featuring two canine choices to laboratory buyers: mongrels or beagles, and purchasing dogs on the internet, like other animals commonly used in labs, can be as easy as a click of a computer mouse.

Puppies, or dogs under the age of one year old, are frequently used in experiments. The most common dogs used in laboratories are beagles, but not because scientists view them as the best ‘models’ of humans. According to the 1970 book, The Beagle as an Experimental Dog, “The most desirable qualities of the Beagle as an experimental dog are its medium size, moderate length of hair coat…, even temperament, adaptability to living in groups, representative conformation of the dog, and the lack of need for cosmetic surgery.” Though seemingly antiquated, this quote echoes many of the justifications for utilizing dogs in experiments today. In short, beagles are docile individuals and they are convenient because they are small, allowing for more animals to be housed and cared for using less space and money. And because they have been utilized for so long, beagles are considered to be the best characterized ‘canine models’ in scientific literature, thus perpetuating their use.

Apparently, researchers also recognize the special status that dogs have in the U.S., since dog adoption programs have been implemented at universities, such as Auburn University ; Cornell University; University of California, San Francisco; and University of Pennsylvania , that do not plan to use the dogs in future experiments or do not want dogs who were bred for genetic research but were not born with the ‘desired’ genetic abnormality.

Facilities Using Dogs

Table 1 illustrates the numbers of dogs reported by research facilities as used in experiments or breeding for experiments in 2000 (excluding those conducted by federal agencies) and 2001 (including federal agency research). Table 2 features the 10 facilities that reported using the most dogs in 2000 and 2001. Drug and toxicology testing labs such as Covance, Pfizer, MPI Research, and Merck led the list, as well as the Wisconsin commercial breeder Ridglan Farms.

The numbers of dogs reported as used in varying categories of pain and distress and whether or not pain relief was offered are illustrated in Table 3. In 2000, 34,108 dogs were used in experiments that involved pain and/or distress at the time reports were due to the USDA, and in 2001 that number grew to 35,505 (2001 figures may be higher because these data also include experiments reported by federal agencies). For each year shown in Table 3, over 1,600 dogs experienced unrelieved pain and/or distress.

Common Testing and Research Done on Dogs

Results from experiments on dogs can be easily found when searching the scientific literature such as journals related to physiology, cardiology, oncology, microbiology, genetics, orthopedics, surgery, and veterinary medicine. Below are some examples of how dogs have been used.

Heart and Lung Research
Dogs are routinely used by medical schools and laboratories in experiments that involve manipulating their cardiac and pulmonary systems to induce lethal medical conditions such as heart failure, cardiac arrest, collapsed lungs, and blocked airways. Dogs have been used so often in heart studies that three-dimensional computational models of their hearts are sometimes used today in studies related to human research.

In a study that was partially funded by the Veterans Administration and published in February 2004, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania used 18 mixed breed dogs to study the effects of ventilation airway pressure on breathing during airflow restriction to dogs’ lungs. In the study, the dogs were anesthetized, catheters were inserted into various parts of their bodies, and, according to the researchers, “Bronchospasm was induced…[each minute] until tearing [of the eyes], hypersalivation, and diarrhea were noted. Afterward, 20–30 min[utes] elapsed to achieve maximal bronchoconstriction. The animals were then given pentobarbital boluses and killed….”

In another experiment that was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Miami Heart Research Institute, the Mayo Foundation, the Marriott Foundation, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, and conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and published in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, 10 male mixed breed dogs were used to study human conditions related to congestive heart failure. Five of the dogs were implanted with pacemakers, and the other five were used as a control group. All dogs had catheters implanted into their femoral arteries to monitor arterial blood pressure and plasma levels. Using a procedure known to induce heart dysfunction and kidney failure based on a previous experiment using 15 dogs conducted by some of the authors, the researchers subjected the dogs with pacemakers to increased heart rates over a one month period. During the last full week, by manipulating the pacemakers once again, the dog’s heart rates were pushed to 220 beats per minute (bpm). The average heart rate for dogs their weight is approximately 70 to 120 (bpm). At the end of this study, all dogs were euthanized. This is one of many experiments using dogs conducted at this esteemed clinic.

Toxicology
Animals from two or more species (one rodent and one non-rodent) are used in toxicity studies, or tests designed to measure the harmful and/or deadly effects of a given substance, such as human drugs, food additives, industrial chemicals, or other products. Dogs remain the most commonly used non-rodent animal in toxicity and safety studies, and beagles are ordinarily used as the standard breed. Other experiments on dogs are done using known toxic substances, such as cocaine, to test the effects of various treatments. Because researchers want to examine the effects of a particular substance on the dogs’ bodies, they are usually killed at the end of the study, if they do not die during the experiment. Studies conducted by private companies to develop new products are not published in most cases.

In one example, a study from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research discusses the effects of the anti-malarial Chinese medicinal herb Artemisinin (qinghaosu) and two derivatives on 20 dogs, researchers report “a progressive syndrome of clinical neurologic defects [i.e., loss of reflexes in their eyes and brain stems] with progressive cardiorespiratory collapse and death in five of six animals.” This paper was recently cited in a 2004 review of Artemisinin-derived drug toxicity studies that demonstrated the drugs caused neurotoxicity in mice, rats, dogs, and rhesus monkeys but resulted in no serious adverse effects in humans in carefully monitored studies. The paper concludes, “If one was to make a decision based on the observed effects in animal studies, probably none of the compounds would have made it to the clinical stage.”

Transplantation
Dogs have been used in various transplantation experiments dating back to at least the 1600s when a scientist used bone from a dog’s skull to repair a person’s malformed skull. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, dogs were used in head and kidney transplant experiments. Dogs and other animals are still used today as ‘model’ humans in experiments related to transplantation of organs, tissue, and cells.

A recently published study that was partly funded by NIH describes the use of three puppies—two eight week old females named Gina and Olivia and one male named Ed— who were bred to have type I Glanzmann's thrombasthenia (GT), a rare blood platelet protein deficiency, in a bone marrow transplantation surgery to assess its effects on treating the GT. Following a procedure previously done and assessed in two published studies using dogs, the research team dosed the puppies with drugs and exposed them to radiation to suppress their immune systems and then infused them with bone marrow from their littermates. Ed died one week after the surgery due to hemorrhaging and lung congestion, and Olivia died 30 days post-surgery due to a canine distemper viral infection. Despite the deaths of Ed and Olivia, the research team considers this a success, but notes that, as with most research, “additional studies are warranted in this model.”

Cancer
Whether bred to be predisposed to cancer, exposed to potential carcinogens, or physically implanted with cancerous tumors, dogs are commonly used in studies to learn about and/or attempt treatments for cancer in people. A research team from Harvard Medical School recently published a National Cancer Institute supported ‘experimental study’ describing three experiments to implant 30 cancerous tumors into 13 dogs. The authors obtained these dogs, females who were ‘retired from breeding,’ from Team Associates, an animal dealer in Canterbury, Connecticut. According to the authors, 12 tumors were implanted under the skin of each dog, one tumor per kidney was injected into each dog, and small tumor pieces were injected into the veins of five of the dogs to induce tumor growth in their lungs. After the tumors grew to the desired size, they were extracted for analysis, and the females were euthanized.

Conclusion

This article hardly skims the surface of the multitude of experiments using dogs over recent years. Finding the cited studies was quite simple, yet reading them is extremely troubling. Considering that dogs are so cherished in our society, it is hard to ponder the treatment of the tens of millions of other animals in U.S. laboratories who may have even less ‘value’ in our society. Each of them feels pain and suffers, and we must continue our efforts to protect each and every one of them.

Miller-Spiegel, Crystal. (Spring 2004). AV Magazine. Pages 6-13.

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