Ontario Hospital Halts Controversial Dog Research Amid Public Outcry

A dog waiting for adoption sits in a kennel on July 31, 2025. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ont., has discontinued its use of dogs in cardiac research after recent media reports indicating the hospital’s research institute induced heart attacks in the animals for study purposes.

The Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph’s Health Care announced on Aug. 11 that it will no longer use dogs as part of its research.

“The Government of Ontario is an important partner in every aspect of our work. Following consultations with the province, St. Joseph’s will immediately cease research studies involving dogs,” the hospital’s communication department said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

“We acknowledge that this will have a significant impact on the ground-breaking research that has resulted in major strides in cardiac care and treatment, and on the dedicated teams involved in this work.”

The announcement follows community backlash in response to reports released last week by the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) and Animal Justice, a Canadian animal rights organization, which referenced allegations from anonymous whistleblowers that dogs were enduring painful and extended procedures as part of research on human heart attack recovery.

That backlash included a weekend demonstration by more than 100 animal lovers outside St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Whistleblowers provided internal study protocol documents, photos, and videos detailing experiments in which heart attacks were induced in dogs so their recoveries could be analyzed using MRIs and PET scanning machines. The dogs would be euthanized and their hearts harvested for further study once analysis was complete.

A video released by Animal Justice showed an interview with two whistleblowers whose appearances were hidden and voices disguised to protect their identities. The organization also gave a more detailed account of their talks with the whistleblowers on its website.

The whistleblowers said dogs, some as young as eight months, were procured from U.S. breeders and were kept in cages upon arrival at the hospital.

The animals were surgically fitted with snares to inhibit blood flow to induce heart attacks lasting from 90 minutes to as long as three hours, causing the animals to cry out in pain.

“They would not sound like regular dog cries, they would sound like a human screaming, like babies screaming,” one whistleblower said in the video, noting that most people working at the hospital had no idea that animal testing was occurring on its upper floor.

“It doesn’t feel right that apparently we’re doing this ground-breaking research that’s 100 percent necessary, yet we’re not allowed to talk about it with anyone,” the other whistleblower said.

St. Joseph’s has not commented on details of the procedures performed on dogs, but in its emailed statement said the research conducted at Lawson Research Institute “adhered to the highest standards of, and is in compliance with, all scientific and ethics protocols.”

A request for an interview and further information about the testing performed at the institute led the hospital’s communication department to refer The Epoch Times to its emailed statement.

The hospital said a separate media statement that canine experiments were carried out “to accurately image post-heart attack injury and healing that we cannot yet decipher using other models.”

Announcement Reaction

The hospital’s decision to halt such procedures was applauded by Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

“I was deeply disturbed by last week’s reports of inhumane medical research taking place on dogs at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and immediately reached out to raise my concerns,” Ford said in an Aug. 11 X post. “I’m pleased that St. Joseph’s has agreed to immediately stop this research.”

Animal Justice lawyer and executive director Camille Labchuk described the research that was taking place at the institute as “cruel and outdated” and called the end of the program “a major victory.”

“These experiments should never have happened in the first place. Animal Justice is now urgently calling on St. Joseph’s to publicly commit to rehoming the dogs who are still alive and still living in cages in the lab,” Labchuk said in a statement.

“After enduring so much suffering, they deserve a second chance at life. We urge St. Joseph’s and all other institutions to end the use of animals in experiments and embrace modern, humane science.”

Animal Justice is also calling for an immediate end to all animal experiments at St. Joseph’s, saying the institute continues to experiment on pigs and rodents.

Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods founder and executive director Dr. Charu Chandrasekera said animal experimentation is not necessary to make scientific breakthroughs.

“Cardiac MRI and PET imaging have advanced so dramatically that we can now observe molecular interactions in real time—to track cardiac injury, inflammation, drug responses, and healing as they occur in heart failure patients,” Chandrasekera said in a statement.

“Around the world, research teams are working with consenting human participants and combining innovative animal-free technologies to explore human biology in unprecedented detail—driving groundbreaking discoveries that directly advance human health.”