By: Bianca Del Bois
Recently, a story came to light about experiments on dogs at a London, Ontario hospital. A whistleblower revealed that puppies were being subjected to invasive heart research at St. Joseph’s Hospital, experiments so cruel that even staff said “it feels like this shouldn’t be happening.” This incident, reported by the Investigative Journalism Bureau, has rightly outraged many Canadians. As an animal advocate, I share that outrage. However, this is not surprising news. In fact, Animal Alliance of Canada has been working tirelessly on this exact issue since 1990.
Every year in Canada, thousands of pet dogs and cats are purchased for use in research. These aren’t only anonymous purpose-bred animals either; many are former pets, even lost family companions brought in to shelters. Canada, unlike other countries, still allows this to happen largely out of the public eye. It’s time to pull back the curtain on this practice and ask hard questions:
Does harming these animals actually help human health?
And even if it did, is it morally acceptable in 2025?
On both counts the evidence says no. We have the knowledge, technology, and creativity to do better.
Outdated Practices and Laws Allow Thousands of Pet Dogs and Cats to be Used in Research in Canada Every Year
One reason this hidden cruelty persists is that Canada’s laws lag far behind public sentiment. Canada is the only G7 nation with no federal law or oversight governing animal experimentation. Oversight is left to a patchwork system of voluntary guidelines. In fact, a non-governmental body, the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), collects data only from institutions that choose to participate. And as a non-profit organization, the CCAC is not subject to Access to Information requests. Privately funded labs that don’t volunteer information can essentially operate in secrecy. This lack of transparency and accountability means Canadians rarely hear about what happens to animals behind laboratory doors.
The situation is especially troubling in Ontario, as Ontario is the only province in Canada where the law actually mandates the supply of pet dogs and cats to research facilities. Under Ontario’s Animals for Research Act (a law dating back to the 1970s), municipal pounds are required by law to release unclaimed dogs and cats to research labs upon request. This practice, often called “pound seizure,” has been abolished in most of the Western world due to ethical concerns. Yet in Ontario, it persists.
Better Science Exists Without Harming Animals
The ethical case against using pets (or any animals) in research is clear – animals suffer pain, fear, and deprivation in lab settings. But even from a purely scientific standpoint, the rationale for animal experiments is crumbling. Good science no longer requires torturing animals – in fact, such cruelty often produces bad science.
For example, in the field of cardiology (heart disease research), fewer than 7 out of 100 drug treatments that show promise in animal tests end up working in humans. That is over a 90% failure rate in translating results from animals to people. As Doctors Against Animal Experiments (a physicians’ group) explains, researchers can force animals to exhibit some symptoms of human diseases, but the underlying causes and physiology remain drastically different. They state plainly that animal experiments are “extremely ineffective in medical research,” and advocate for “modern research methods” like human organoids (mini-organ cultures) and multi-organ chips instead. In other words, we now have the technology to study human diseases in human-relevant systems without causing suffering.
Crucially, many cutting-edge scientists and institutions are moving away from animal experiments. Humane, high-tech approaches are on the rise: human cell-based models, 3D tissue printing, “organ-on-a-chip” microdevices, advanced computer simulations, and ethically conducted clinical studies with consenting patients. These methods can often predict human outcomes better than the crude method of artificially inducing illness or injury in an animal. Even the pharmaceutical regulators are catching on. In the United States, the FDA has dropped the mandate that all new drugs be tested on animals, clearing the way for modern test methods. And just this year, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest biomedical research funder, announced it will stop dedicating funds to certain animal research programs.
On the other hand, clinging to animal experimentation can waste resources and lives (both animal and human). A telling case is at Wayne State University in the U.S., where for decades experimenters have conducted painful heart failure tests on dogs. They surgically implanted devices into the dogs, forced them to run on treadmills to induce heart stress, and kept them alive in agony for months only to inevitably die from the experiments. Hundreds of dogs were killed and over $15 million spent, yet these experiments “failed to help a single patient,” according to records obtained by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. This is the reality of much animal-based research – it’s not just cruel, it’s often ineffective science. The physiology of dogs, cats, or rodents differs from ours in countless ways, and results often don’t translate to real treatments or cures for people.
Simply put, hurting animals is an antiquated approach to advancing medicine. Modern science can and should be both humane and effective. As a society, we do not need to choose between medical progress and compassion – we can and must have both.
It’s 2025. The Time for Change is Now
We have the tools to replace these archaic practices with innovative solutions that spare animals and better serve human health. What we need now is the will from policymakers, scientific funding agencies, and the public to embrace change.
Here in Canada, a few critical steps are long overdue.
First, we must modernize our laws. It’s unacceptable that Canada has no federal animal-research law and that Ontario still mandates pound seizure. Ontario’s Animals for Research Act, in particular, is a relic from another era. It must be updated to ban the use of lost or surrendered pets in research, full stop.
Secondly, we need greater transparency and accountability from the scientific community. Research institutions should publicly report all animal use, and independent oversight (with real enforcement power) should be established.
Sunshine is a disinfectant: when people see what is happening, they often demand better. The London hospital dog-testing revelation is a prime example. This story only came to light because someone spoke up, and now there is public pressure to stop it. We shouldn’t have to rely on whistleblowers and leaks; our system should proactively safeguard against abuse.
Finally, and most importantly, Canada must invest in and prioritize humane, human-centric research methods. This means directing more funding to laboratories developing alternative models (like organ-on-chip technology, computational biology, and human tissue banks). It means encouraging our universities and hospitals to collaborate with organizations that specialize in non-animal research. When researchers in Canada come forward with a new approach that could replace an animal test, they should find open doors and funding, not institutional resistance. In the long run, this is how we truly advance medicine.
I believe Canadians expect and deserve a higher standard of ethics in scientific research.
Our pets, and all animals, cannot speak for themselves so we must be their voice. The next time you hear someone defend animal experiments by saying “It’s how we find cures,” remember that hurting animals is not a prerequisite for helping humans. It’s time to align our research practices with our values of compassion and innovation.
