“ENOUGH” – Six Billboards in Lansing and Detroit Urge State Lawmakers to Outlaw Wayne State’s Painful Dog Experiments, Pass Queenie’s Law

LANSING, Mich.—State lawmakers driving to and from Lansing this month will find it hard to miss the message. Five huge billboards lining the highways around the capital—and another along I-75 in Detroit—feature a beagle with the message “$15 Million Wasted on Wayne State’s Dog Experiments? ENOUGH. Pass Queenie’s Law!” The ads—paid for by the nonprofit medical ethics group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine—refer to bipartisan legislation introduced last month that would prohibit painful dog experiments at Michigan’s publicly funded institutions. The ads went up this week and will stay in place until April 27, with three of the billboards remaining until May 25.

Rep. Joe Aragona (R-Clinton Township) and Sen. Paul Wojno (D-Warren) introduced Queenie’s Law—HB 4254 and SB 127—in response to the controversial dog experiments conducted at Wayne State University. The legislation is named after Queenie, a stray from Gratiot County who was killed by Wayne State after being used in heart failure experiments for seven months. The National Institutes of Health has spent about $15 million on the experiments since they began in 1991.

“Republicans and Democrats agree we should not be wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to inflict pain on dogs,” said Ryan Merkley, director of research advocacy for the Physicians Committee. “This is a political no-brainer.”

According to public records obtained by the Physicians Committee, Wayne State employees cut open dogs’ chest cavities, stab wires and catheters into the animals’ hearts, and implant medical devices in and around their arteries. Dogs who survive the surgeries are forced to run on treadmills while the implanted devices trigger heart failure. Wayne State also recently started feeding the dogs a “high fat diet” to “induce metabolic syndrome,” which can increase risk of strokes. Every dog used in the experiments will eventually die. Many dogs die after their chest cavities painfully fill with blood, while other dogs have been found dead in their cages or have been killed due to infections.

The Physicians Committee points out on its website that patient trials, population studies, and the use of donated and diseased human hearts produce useful information for the treatment of heart disease. The Texas Heart Institute, which focuses exclusively on cardiovascular disease, stopped using dogs in 2015, stating that “the canine physiology is not the optimal match.”

Experiments with animals are routinely grouped into three categories—one in which the animals do not experience pain and two in which pain is expected. Queenie’s Law only prohibits painful experiments on dogs when conducted at a “public body.”

To see the billboards and their locations or to interview Ryan Merkley, please contact Reina Pohl at 202-527-7326 or rpohl [at] pcrm.org (rpohl[at]pcrm[dot]org).