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Michigan’s Painful, Taxpayer-Funded Dog Experiments

According to public records obtained by the Physicians Committee, Wayne State University has conducted painful, deadly heart failure experiments on dogs since 1991. The experiments have killed hundreds of dogs, wasted $15 million in public money, and failed to help a single patient.

Thankfully, new legislation could change that. Queenie's Law (HB 4254 and SB 127) would prohibit painful experiments at publicly funded institutions in Michigan. The legislation was named after a dog who suffered and died at Wayne State.

In the experiments, Wayne State employees cut open dogs’ chest cavities, insert devices in and around major blood vessels, stab catheters into their hearts, and “tunnel” cables and wires under their skin and out between the dogs’ shoulder blades. The dogs who survive the surgeries are forced to run on treadmills while experimenters drastically raise their heart rates using implanted devices. This is repeated for days, weeks, or even months. By design, every dog will eventually die during the experiments—when their body gives out or an implanted device breaks or malfunctions.

Wayne State’s botched surgeries have led to many dogs suffering internal injuries that cause their chest cavities to fill with blood, making it painfully difficult to breathe, before they are killed. Other dogs die in their cages. In a cruel new twist, public records show that Wayne State is now feeding the dogs a “high fat diet,” which increases their risk of stroke.

We don't need to harm and kill dogs to improve public health. Patient trials, population studies, and the use of donated and diseased human hearts are producing human-relevant results. In 2015, the Texas Heart Institute stopped using dogs altogether, stating that “the canine physiology is not the optimal match.”

Please help end these painful, wasteful experiments. Take action today!

Michigan Residents: Contact Your State Legislators

Outside Michigan? Contact Wayne State

Myths and Facts

Myth: Dogs are necessary to advance human health research.

Fact: Human-relevant methods such as trials involving patients, population studies, and cell-based and computer-based models mean that we do not have to subject dogs to painful experiments. Igor Efimov, PhD, at the George Washington University uses diseased hearts from patients undergoing transplants or hearts donated for research to collect human- relevant data. Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic conducts heart failure studies with human patients6 and has criticized the Wayne State dog experiments.

Myth: Dogs are necessary for the development and testing of pharmaceuticals.

Fact: In a July 2021 statement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wrote: “The FDA does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs.” In addition, in 2022, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that many interpret to mean the FDA no longer must require the use of animals for preclinical drug testing.” The President and CEO of Vanda Pharmaceuticals has said: “There is no evidence that long-term studies on dogs add any predictive value to human safety.”

Myth: The use of animals in laboratories is already heavily regulated.

Fact: Under the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), no experiments are prohibited—including those that inflict pain. The AWA is primarily a husbandry statute that regulates the size of cages, cleanliness, food and water, etc. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is supposed to enforce the AWA, was cited by its own inspector general for closing investigations involving animal deaths and serious repeat violations and for unnecessarily reducing fines by an average of 86%. In February 2019, The Washington Post reported: “USDA inspectors documented 60 percent fewer violations at animal facilities in 2018 from the previous year.

Myth: State legislatures leave the oversight of animal experiments to the federal government.

Fact: In recent years, several states have passed laws that prohibit certain types of experiments or increase oversight of facilities that use animals. In 2022, Virginia signed into law five bills that regulate the use and sale of dogs “for experimental purposes.” Also in 2022, California passed a law that would prohibit the use of dogs in the testing of chemicals, toxic substances, and food additives. In 2018, Virginia outlawed the use of state funds for carrying out painful experiments on dogs. In 2023, legislation was introduced in Pennsylvania that would prohibit the use of public funds for painful experiments on dogs.”

Myth: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards grants only for important research.

Fact: When evaluating whether to continue to fund research, the NIH relies heavily on the number of papers published by the researcher, not on an evaluation of whether that research has improved human health. A 2012 report in the journal Nature showed that the NIH repeatedly awards mediocrity rather than innovation. Speaking to Reuters about the report, a prominent scientist stated: “It’s just amazing that most of NIH’s $30 billion is going to scientists who haven’t had the greatest impact.”

Myth: Wayne State and other research facilities buy dogs from responsible, law-abiding breeders.

Fact: For years, Wayne State purchased dogs from Virginia-based Envigo, which was forced to shut down in 2022 and fined $35 million. Envigo’s staff killed conscious puppies with injections to their hearts, withheld food from nursing pregnant dogs, and failed to document the cause of death for hundreds of puppies. Now, Wayne State purchases dogs from Marshall BioResources, a dog factory farm that came under fire in 2024 when whistleblower photos from its facility revealed piles of feces stacked under beagles’ cages and a dead dog shoved into a metal bin, his brown coat covered in mud or feces. In February 2025, the USDA Office of Inspector General released a report stating that 80% of dog breeders like Marshall had failed to fully correct previous animal welfare violations.