Running For Their Lives

And for more than twenty-five years, that's what the dogs used in the experiments of George Billman, Ph.D. have been doing!

The dogs Billman uses are not able to run happy and free through the woods, fields and beaches.

His dogs are confined to the lab cage. Their exercise is running on a treadmill and being subjected to a heart attack.

(not an OSU lab)

The focus of his research has been mechanisms responsible for ventricular fibrillation induced by
either myocardial eschemia or cocaine toxicity. His federal funding for the cocaine toxicity studies was halted, but not
until after he had killed hundreds of dogs. Results from his cocaine experiments did not provide anything of
significance that was not already known from human studies. Today Dr. Billman continues to artificially
induce heart attacks in his dogs, by exercising a dog on a treadmill, then mechanically occluding a major
coronary artery.

Protests against his use of dogs has increased since the approval, in April 2007, of a protocol to use 120 dogs to study Omega-3 and the publication of Billman's 25 years analysis of his work using dogs.

Billman concludes in his paper that, "... during the last 25 years, the canine model of sudden cardiac death described in this article has provided invaluable information concerning factors involved in VF, there remain many unanswered questions. The mechanisms responsible for VF at the cellular and subcellular level remain largely to be determined. It, therefore, is very likely that this canine model for sudden death will continue to stimulate new research and produce interesting results for the next 25 years."

We disagree and demonstrations calling for a halt to these experiments were held in May and June with other protests planned for the future.

The Columbus Dispatch - Research on dogs at OSU protested - 5/12/07

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What You Do in addition to attend the next demonstration

Contact OSU IACUC (Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee-they review animal experimentation on campus)

or Earle Holland, OSU Public Relations

Write: IACUCinfo@osu.edu or Holland.8@osu.edu

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The omega-3 experiment

August 2007 - Billman receives his NIH grant to kill 120 dogs.

February 2008 - Dogs arrive - killed - found dead

September 2008 - UPDATE - The dogs in the experiments

What is the dog model Billman uses?

Simply put the dogs are implanted with a balloon in their heart, and while running on a treadmill the balloon is expanded causing blood to stop flowing to the heart.

From Practical Methods in Cardiovascular Research by Stefan Dhein, Friedrich Wilhelm Mohr, Mario Delmar (essays) Billman writes:

"730 dogs, 207 (28.4%) dogs died acutely either during surgery or within the next four days following surgery. “ These would be the found dead in cage dogs that P.O.E.T. has read in Animal disposition Records. “Thus 523 dogs survived to be studied; of those 4 were eliminated (heart worm positive-perry dogs) and 33 experienced instrumentation failure (left circumflex coronary occluder rupture) and could not be classified. The exercise plus ischemia test has been performed on 486 dogs, 284 dogs developed ventricular flutter that rapidly deteriorated to ventricular fibrillation (susceptible) during this test, while the remaining 204 dogs did not (resistant). Only 15% of the susceptible dogs were not successfully resuscitated. The lethal arrhythmias were highly reproducible in the susceptible dogs"

Meaning dogs that were susceptible always were - those that were resistant always were.

“This model was first described over twenty years ago …”

Billman has a troubleshooting section - That’s the actual name of the section Troubleshooting.

“The number of defibrillation episodes any given dog may experience should also be limited to no more than three. As with any technique, be it learning to ride a bicycle or master a complex piano sonata, practice makes perfect. During the last twenty years, this exercise plus ischemia test has elicited ventricular fibrillation in 284 dogs. The initial resuscitation rate hovered around 70%. However, the current success rate is better than 90%. Overall, only 43 of the 284 dogs (15.1%) have not been successfully defibrillated.”

“The most common problem has been the rupture of the balloon.”

Since July of 2002 Billmans' grant money has come from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the effects of daily exercise and the heart, "Effect of Daily Exercise on Cardiac Autonomic Regulation". So far this grant has provided Billman and OSU with $1,473,00.00, nearly 1.5 million taxpayer dollars. The grant was scheduled to end June 2007.

Research Funding:
• "Effect of Daily Exercise on Cardiac Autonomic Regulation". NIH, $1,000,000 (directs), 07-01-02/06-30-06. (Extended)
• "The Effect of Non-sulfonlyureal ATP-sensitive Potassium Channel Antagonists on VF". Aventis Pharma, $85,000 (directs), 03-01-03/02-28-04.

Additional Billman Protocols and Publications

Billman receives his dogs from Robert Perry, a USDA - Class B dealer, who lives near Mt. Sterling. The following protocol is currently receiving dogs via Robert Perry.

2006A0052 - Anti-arrhythmic Drug Testing was approved to use 120 dogs (40 per year) over a three year period. The dogs will go through the normal Billman experimental procedures, except that two new drug compounds will be tested each year.

One week after finding the susceptible dogs they will then be treated with a test compound. The drugs to be tested will be dissolved in the vehicle recommended by the sponsor(in most cases this will be normal saline). The exercise plus ischemia test will be repeated after the injection of the drug vehicle. This third exercise plus ischemia test will be used to confirm that the drug was, in fact, protective against ventricular fibrillation. If a drug fails to protect 4 dogs, then no further testing will be made with this compound. A successful drug will be tested in 10 susceptible dogs. After completion of the study, the dogs will be euthanized.

Updated September 14, 2008