Lily Tomlin wants Wayne State University to end dog testing

DETROIT – Wayne State University graduate and actress Lily Tomlin is joining in a protest of the university's medical research practices.

In a letter to the university's president, which was first published by the Detroit Free Press, Tomlin asks the school to stop using dogs in heart failure experiments. Tomlin says the experiments have not yielded any benefits for humans.

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In a response to Local 4, WSU said it is committed to ensuring that all research and teaching protocols using live animals are designed and carried out in a humane manner that complies with all laws and guidelines.

WSU's full statement is here:

Wayne State University denies the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine's charges of any animal mistreatment. The PCRM is dedicated to ending animal research of any kind, a viewpoint unsupported by many organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Wayne State is committed to the protection of animals, but also recognizes the benefits of research involving animals. Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century – for both human and animal health. From antibiotics to blood transfusions, from dialysis to chemotherapy, bypass surgery and joint replacement, practically every present-day protocol for the prevention, treatment, cure and control of disease, pain and suffering is based on knowledge attained through research with animals.

Every winter we hear about someone having a heart attack while shoveling snow. Certain types of exercise trigger a type of feedback loop in people with high blood pressure or modest heart failure. How this feedback loop is triggered and why it escalates to a heart attack under certain conditions, like shoveling snow, is not well understood. Research at Wayne State is making progress uncovering the factors that contribute to this deadly cycle.

The world's most eminent experts in clinical and translational cardiovascular sciences sitting on the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) panels, rate the research as highly important. The NHLBI has funded the research continually for more than 20 years because its scientists view Wayne State's resulting research data and peer-reviewed journal articles as valuable contributions to cardiovascular research. Only the top 10 percent of all NHLBI grants are funded, so if the research was not productive it would not receive the competitive funding. The NHLBI's cardiovascular experts are far more qualified to judge the quality of scientific research than PCRM veterinarians.

The animal laboratories at Wayne State are subject to surprise inspections, veterinary oversight, and intense scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; our record is exemplary.

The USDA conducted inspection of Wayne State's animal laboratories on Nov. 12 and 13, 2013, following PCRM allegations and the USDA found no problems whatsoever. The USDA also inspected WSU's animal labs between Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, 2011. No violations were found.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare also concurred on Jan. 27, 2012, with a Wayne State Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee investigation that found no evidence of noncompliance with the federal policy on humane care and use of laboratory animals. 

Wayne State University is committed to ensuring that all research and teaching protocols using live animals are designed and carried out in a humane manner that complies with all laws, policies and guidelines. The university has the highest level of ethical standards in conducting biomedical research, as well as the highest level of care for animals used in research, and has been accredited by the Association of Assessment and Accreditation for Laboratory Animal Care International since its inception.

The university strictly adheres to the policy of using only as many animals as reasonably necessary, minimizing pain and distress, and using alternatives whenever feasible.