Dogs bred to be our most loyal companions are instead trapped in labs, enduring painful experiments funded by taxpayer dollars. In this eye opening episode, longtime animal advocate and law student Jeremy Beckham exposes the money driven reality behind animal testing and why it fails both animals and human patients.
What if the animal research you thought was saving lives was actually driven more by money and outdated methods than real scientific progress?
In this powerful episode of Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health, host Dr. Johnny Lieberman sits down with Jeremy Beckham, animal rights activist and third year law student at Lewis & Clark Law School. With over 20 years of advocacy experience including work with PETA, the Beagle Freedom Project, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Jeremy reveals how the multi-billion-dollar animal research industry is disconnected from actual patient outcomes.
From the shocking use of beagles in painful toxicity tests to the story of chimpanzees that led to a major policy shift, Jeremy explains why 92% of drugs that pass animal tests still fail in humans, how institutions prioritize grants and publications over results, and why non animal methods are often superior. He also shares hard-won victories, including campaigns that closed dog labs and shifted universities toward better science.
Whether you’re a dog lover, a physician, a scientist, or simply someone who wants medical research that actually works, this episode is a must listen wake up call about where your tax dollars are going and how we can demand better for both animals and human health.
Top 3 Takeaways:
About the Guest: Jeremy Beckham
Jeremy Beckham is a third year law student at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, and a dedicated animal rights activist with more than 20 years of experience. He has worked in various capacities for PETA’s laboratory investigations department, the Beagle Freedom Project (as Research Specialist), and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Jeremy has managed major campaigns against dog labs (including at Texas A&M and the University of Utah), helped pass state legislation requiring labs to offer dogs for adoption instead of euthanasia, and participated in numerous Freedom of Information Act efforts to expose lab practices.
He is passionate about using the law to advocate for better science and stronger protections for animals. After graduating, Jeremy plans to continue litigating on behalf of animal protection organizations and activists.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jsbeckham
About the Show:
Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health explores the intersection of animal welfare, public policy, and human health. Hosted by Dr. Johnny Lieberman, each episode invites changemakers, legal experts, and health advocates to shed light on what really impacts our communities and what we can do about it.
About the Host:
Dr. Johnny Lieberman is a physician, public health advocate, and lifelong animal lover with a passion for connecting the dots between animal welfare, human behavior, and the systems that shape our lives. With a background in both medicine and public health policy, Johnny brings a unique lens to conversations about how our treatment of animals impacts human health, the environment, and social justice.
In Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health, Johnny brings warmth, curiosity, and a dash of wit to tough conversations that matter. From exposing the realities of factory farming to uncovering the links between zoonotic diseases and our food systems, his goal is to empower listeners to be informed, compassionate, and engaged citizens while still keeping it real (and sometimes bringing in puppies).
Whether he's discussing legislative loopholes or snuggling his rescue dog between recordings, Dr. Lieberman believes that creating a healthier world starts with how we treat its most vulnerable beings.
Email: John@johnliebermanmd.com
[00:00:00] On today's episode, we learn about the use of dogs in research. Yes, you heard that right? Dogs in Research. How many dogs spend their lives imprisoned in cages, enduring, painful experiments financed by our taxpayer dollars day in and day out. And how can this continue? If you have ever loved a dog, this is an episode you will not want to miss.
Welcome to another episode of Puppies, pandemics and Public Health. I am Dr. Johnny Lieberman. Today on the show, I am pleased to welcome Jeremy Beckham. Jeremy is an animal rights activist and law student based out of Portland, Oregon for more than 20 years. Jeremy has been advocating to get Animals Out laboratories during his time as an activist.
He has worked in various capacities for PETA Beagle Freedom [00:01:00] Project and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Jeremy hopes to marshal courtroom skills to continue advocating for better science and a more humane approach after he graduates from Lewis and Clark Law School later this year.
Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time. Of course. Thank you for having me, Johnny. All right. Jeremy, tell me what do you think is the most important point that you'd like to get across if the audience takes home at least one thing from our discussion today? What do you think that should be?
If we're talking about the use of animals in laboratories, I think one of the most important things for people to understand is that what is currently making this whole world go round is not finding new cures or new treatments. That's what people think in their minds, that using animals and research is all about.[00:02:00]
But what's really making this world go around is money. And the fact that research universities are making hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, office practice, companies that are breeding the animals to sell to laboratories are making money off this practice. And that money flow is not actually connected to results for patients.
It's not connected to new therapies. And so that's one of the fundamental misalignments that we have in this entire system is that it's not results oriented anymore. It's gotten very untethered from things that actually help people. Instead what we have are people who are building careers off what are very outdated research methods based on publications more than anything else.
And getting tenure at universities. And I think if people understood that a little bit more, I think that what little support there is for animal testing. 'cause now a majority of Americans oppose animal testing. Actually the [00:03:00] opinion polling shows that consistently. But for those who do still support this practice, it's clear that people think that's only because they think that it's somehow necessary to advance science.
And I think if people understood kind of the institutional structure a little bit more, they would understand that it's not really about that anymore. It's about flow of money. And I think what little support there is for animal research would collapse if that was better. Understood. Wow. That's a really concise summary.
Jeremy. Thanks for bringing that home. And there's a lot of really good points in there about research and funding, which were new to me until not so long ago. As a practicing physician, I can speak for myself and many of my colleagues in this space, we had no idea that the system is like this.
Where we're taught and where we're educated with the animal research model growing up and learning. And we take for granted that while we don't see it as perfect, [00:04:00] I think many of us think it's about as close to perfect as we're going to get. And there needs to be this funding of what's. The billions of dollars annually.
Now, I think if you look at the whole NIH budget, that's right, to keep investing in animal research because it's the best we have to get medications, therapies, into the hands of doctors to help their patients. And what you are saying sounds like a paradigm shift in what's happening and in the way the public perceives it.
And if that's accurate It sounds like we have a couple of targets to go after for changing the mindset and in that scenario, simple and concept, but difficult in reality. As you know, we can get some meaningful change that in the end is gonna help animals and help patients.
Does that sound about right? That's exactly right.
I think you [00:05:00] nailed it there. And I think one of the problems we have is that many physicians, many scientists, they've just kind of taken it as almost an article of faith, that using animals and research just must be beneficial for humans in the year 2026, because why else would we be doing it?
And there's also, I think, a certain amount of like, frankly, tribalistic politics that gets imprinted on this, where people just think you're attacking science writ large. And so any attack on science, people are gonna circle the wagons and defend all of it. Even if there are practices that are outdated, that are cruel, that should be done away with.
I think a lot of people in that community don't even want to reevaluate or reconsider that because again, they just get in that kind of siege mentality of wanting to defend. Anything that's going on in the sector of science. And that's just not a tenable position. I mean, science itself is a process that requires constant self reexamination and retooling old ways of thinking.
I mean, if we didn't do that, [00:06:00] then we would still be looking at the miasma theory for the spread of disease. We understand that sometimes we get set in our old ways and new technologies, new ways of thinking don't break through in the way they should. The thing that I like to point out for people who maybe are skeptical that using animals doesn't work is I like to talk about what happened with the use of chimpanzees in the United States.
because what you had was a couple different waves where the federal government established these large chimpanzee laboratories. You had one during the space exploration program during the 1960s and 1950s where nasa was sending chimpanzees and other primates into space.
So basically the federal government in the 1950s and sixties during the space race, they brought over a lot of chimpanzees from Africa and set up laboratories for nasa.
And then they expanded these laboratories in the 1980s in response to the HIV pandemic. And for a long time we had these chimpanzees in laboratories, and we were using them for [00:07:00] hepatitis experiments. We were using them for HIV experiments. There were about eight or nine chimp laboratories in the United States.
And during those decades, all of these laboratories and all these scientists were saying, this is absolutely essential science, absolutely essential research. There's no alternative to using these chimps. But the public pressure to look critically at this, just kept growing. And a lot of that was led by Jane Goodall.
Actually. Jane Goodall has been a very loud voice against using animals and experiments, especially primates. And, you know, just all these new revelations about just how similar chimpanzees are to us, in terms of their emotional complexity and their intelligence forced the issue where Congress in, I wanna say 2009, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine, which today is the National Academies of Science, they asked the Institute of Medicine to basically evaluate all of the use of chimpanzees in the United States and prepare a report because Congress was like, we hear these two sides telling us chimpanzee research is essential.
And then we hear this other [00:08:00] side that says it's cruel and unnecessary. What are we to make of this as members of Congress? So they asked the Institute of Medicine to prepare this report, and this report came out in around 2011. And the bottom line of the report was, they said that in their examination of all the chimpanzees going on in the United States, the vast majority of it, if not all of it, was unnecessary.
So the takeaway for me was as soon as you actually had a neutral uninterested third party, and these are people who have a scientific background, as soon as they actually looked under the hood and said, show us your work. let's actually see your results that we've got from, you know, having these chimpanzees locked up.
In some cases, since the 1960s, 1970s, decades and decades of research, there was actually very littlehow long do these chimps live in captivity? I don't think most people realize that chimpanzees can easily live to be in their sixties. So almost as long as humans, their lifespan can be in captivity
and they can be [00:09:00] experimented on , kept in cages for 50 plus years. That's exactly correct. Wow. I just wanted to interrupt and make that point of how it's bad enough what's going on, but it's decades. These animals are trapped, potentially undergoing painful, toxic experiments, interventions, procedures, decades .
That's right. And living that whole Time in what really does amount to just a prison cell, a two by six room with bars, and again, these are highly intelligent animals, very social animals. They need a lot of intellectual stimulation and they're deprived of that, and they get depressed just as humans would in that environment.
So I mean, the cost for the chimps is immense. and this Institute of Medicine report came out and said, we're wasting our time and our money here. And that was the final nail in the coffin or the beginning of the end for the use of chimpanzees in research in the United States.
And the NIH implemented a policy very soon after that said, [00:10:00] we're no longer gonna fund chimpanzee research. And that's still the case. NIH still has that policy that they won't fund chimpanzee research. But my question has always been, chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans, right?
Biologically morphologically. There's no other animal more similar to us genetically. And if we looked under the hood and the chimpanzee research wasn't giving us valuable data and valuable information, why in the world do we think mouse data is giving us valuable data and valuable research? An animal that's even less genetically and biologically similar to us?
And the answer is that they're actually not. but no one has looked under the hood. So to speak, of the mouse research in the same way they have the chimpanzee research, it's just taken as an article of faith that using mice or using dogs or using rabbits has some kind of value. And so we haven't had the same momentum to end that use like we have chimps, although I think we're getting there with dogs luckily.
but you know, it just takes a lot of pressure to finally move these institutions. They have [00:11:00] a lot of inertia to wanna just keep the gravy, train rolling, keep that grant money coming in and not have anyone voice anything in opposition to end those practices. Yeah, the status quo is just hard to change.
Very hard to change, not just in this arena, but I mean, you study law you're finishing up, and I would suspect that's been throughout history, even going back to the beginning of the birth of our country and probably across the world status quo is just very hard to change.
and I also wanted to ask you to clarify,no, chimpanzee research is being funded by the government, but that doesn't mean there's not other monkeys that are being experimented on. if you could just help,
Our listeners understand monkey chimpanzee Macaw. So they're all primates. You know, primate is a large family of mammals, and then underneath that umbrella [00:12:00] of primates, you have monkeys and you have apes. And under apes you have chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and Gibbons.
Those are all the apes. And then under monkeys, you have hundreds of species, actually you have Capuchins, Reese's, maca monkeys, baboons, excess squirrel monkeys, spider monkeys. I mean, there's tons and tons in laboratories. You tend to see either the long tailed Maca or the Reeses Maca. And to some degree, there's still also some use of baboons and capuchin and a couple other species.
But the maca monkeys, the dominant species you see in laboratories and those are monkeys and chimpanzees are apes, and they are in just different taxonomy classifications. Great. Thanks for explaining that. Yeah. And you got it. Something, which is one of my many frustrations with this whole process and something I aim to do is helping change this narrative if you're not.
In favor of continuing with the status quo [00:13:00] animal research. Somehow you're attacking science and you're anti-science, and I come from a science background as you know, and my listeners know. I find that statement completely off and not based on scientific principles even, we get labeled as fringe or we're anti-science.
We're just out to save all the animals. And I'm much more of an outsider. I've been an outsider for much longer than I've been. Part of this fight. And I really understand that. up until a few years ago, I might have bought that argument without looking into it further, which is, I think what the general public is, and you wouldn't expect someone who's not in this space or the research space to, Hey, well lemme go on PubMed and pull some articles and see what that national science report really said.
nobody can expect anybody to do that. Yeah. But I'm a scientist. I look at this from the scientific angle and I'm in an extreme minority in my own [00:14:00] world, and so The big picture, how we could try and combat this narrative and at least get it more on equal footing. We've been doing science for decades with this animal model.
We've learned that a lot of that science is actually flawed, yet it is funding it, and we have a lot of areas, we have new technology that has been shown to be superior. In some areas, other areas where it's growing and maybe with another supply of money, it's probably gonna wind up proving superior.
But the technology that you and I are talking about I put in the category of human relevant research, whereas looking at rats or mice or rabbits, that's not human relevant. That's almost the needle in a haystack. Yeah. Once in a while, if you do a hundred thousand experiments, you're gonna find something that gets through and works.
That doesn't mean it's the most efficient way to do it or the cheapest way to do it by [00:15:00] any stretch, correct. So yeah. How do we help to change this narrative to gain more of a public buy-in and a lawmakers a larger group who are gonna challenge the status quo? What do you have thoughts on that?
Yeah, so I think there's no shortcut to this process in my opinion. I mean, I think it's just a matter of education and advocacy and just communicating our message and showing our work and our evidence, in as many audiences as we can. And, well, first of all, I think it's important to understand too, when we're talking about the use of animals and research, there's really two completely independent and sufficient reasons that I think this practice needs to end.
One is that it's cruel and unethical. Science has to have ethical guardrails. We all understand that, right? I mean, we've had shameful histories in our past where we've used unconsenting humans in research. And even if we could learn things from doing that, we understand that's an [00:16:00] individual who has rights.
They can't consent to that experiment or they wouldn't consent to that experiment. And there's some ethical line there that's been transgressed, And I love science of course, and I love western medicine. I love all of the principles of the scientific method.
I think it's the perfect method that humans have devised for understanding the truth of natural phenomenon is the scientific method. I defend that completely, but it is a moral.
a lot of the programs of the Third Reich were heavily informed by physicians and leading scientists at the time.
Physiciansoverwhelmingly supported the Third Reich actually. And I only say that just to make the broader point, that science itself doesn't give us very many deep insights about how we should treat each other's or our fellow earthlings.
So that still has to come from somewhere else and we all have to understand that. But then there is the second argument, sorry, I interrupt again, Joe. Go ahead there. Yeah. The wayI summarize that and why I've talked about it is it's not getting data and science regardless of [00:17:00] the cost. Exactly.
the sense I get from the opposition is we, this is critical. we can't guess, we have to sacrifice monkeys or whatever animals, but it's critical information and the cost of it. Is not into the equation. And
That's the way I feel. And you reminding me of some of the horrific human experience we've done without consent of the humans. as a society. despite how good the research might be without consent as decided, we decided that's not worth the cost.
we've decided that the cost is too great. And you talked about the third rike. The cost is too great and so. Experiments on humans while they happen all the time. And I just need to clarify that it's not like we go from animals directly to a medication you could pick up at your local pharmacy.
Human experiments happen. Absolutely . They're with consent and nobody has a problem with that. So it's not like we're taking human experimentation out of the question. Correct. It's human [00:18:00] experimentation with consent and we get real Absolutely. Human data. And a lot of times, a lot of times we discover new things with those relatively small trials often that did not appear in animal studies because That's flawed science of animals . So I just extend that. We decided, I think across the board it's clear. Experimenting on humans without their consent. The cost is too great. And I think you would argue, and many would, how does that not translate to animals? Correct.especially the horrific, painful stuff that they do in particular.
And you mentioned the guardrails and I think that's a great term for it and yeah, it's not really addressed the way I look at it, and I don't think the public is asking that question enough but what cost are we getting this data at? I think the public actually is asking that question more, more [00:19:00] than they were before.
But you know, who I think is still not asking that question enough is the scientific community. I think, just like you said, you know, very often I think they think, torturing 10,000 monkeys is worth it. If I get one published paper that four people a year read, I mean it doesn't matter.
You know, the cost benefit scale can be wildly outta whack they have the wrong endpoint. And that's kind of brings me to the second point. So the first point is that it's cruel and unethical. And then the second point is that it's bad science anyway.
Right? So we talked about the cost side of the scale. It actually turns out too that the thing that's in our other hand that we're weighing the benefits is awfully light. So the benefits are also very light. You know, there's not actually good data that we're getting outta this process anyway.
And that critique is in my mind, completely within the paradigm of science and the scientific method. I mean, my critique of the use of animals and research. Is entirely one grounded in the scientific method and western traditions of empiricism and data and evidence. And I just think it's just a case you can make with certain facts.
Like [00:20:00] 92% of drugs that appear safe and effective in animals when you try them out in a human. They don't work, they fail in phase one clinical trials. That's a shocking statistic, but it's true. And just the fact that you've had a ton of meta-analyses that have been done by a number of researchers who have published in journal, the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, where they go back and there's a famous one titled, where is the Evidence That Animal Research benefits Humans?
And when they actually go back and try to quantify, okay, we've done this 50 years of billions and billions of dollars of animal research, what has actually come out of that? The answer is very, very, very little. And sometimes in fact, and this doesn't get talked about enough, we get bad consequences, not just a waste, but you get a drug that actually when we test it in humans, we get an adverse side effect and people die.
That wasn't predicted. Like just the example that I like to talk about. Is smoking. Okay. For decades, the tobacco corporations, For decades in the sixties and the seventies and even [00:21:00] into the eighties, they were casting doubt on the link between smoking cigarettes and cancer and heart disease.
Okay? This link was pretty well established in epidemiological studies going back to the early 1950s, okay? You had landmark studies like the Dahlin Hills, study, which look tracked tens of thousands of smokers, compare them with tens of thousands of non-smokers, and said, there's no way. This is a coincidence.
We're seeing way more lung cancer in the smoker group than we are the non-smoker, and we've done our statistical analysis, right? This was established in the early fifties, but what was happening was the tobacco corporations were grabbing beagles. They were grabbing monkeys, and they were putting them in laboratories and forcing them to smoke the equivalent of 10 to 12 packs a day.
They were strapping devices onto their face, forced them to inhale tobacco smoke for years, cutting them open and saying, Hey, look, we don't see any neoplasms on their lungs. Okay? No signs that this is causing cancer. So there must be something wrong with your epidemiological studies.
And so for [00:22:00] decades, the tobacco corporations were able to cast doubt, and people continued to smoke with blinders on. And our federal government was refusing to regulate this dangerous product under this belief, largely informed by animal studies that it was safe. How many people died. I mean, honestly, if you think about it, how many people died as a result of the animal studies Just confusing us.
what should have been a loud and clear signal in the clinical and epidemiological research? and then you add in just all of the wasted time and money that's gone into all these nonsense experiments that looking at cancer and mice, there's a really famous quote from the former director of the National Cancer Institute.
He told the LA Times, we've been curing mice of cancer for decades and it's never worked in humans. And we're still doing that. We're still funding all these experiments. We're genetically manipulating mice so that they're developing a form of cancer that we understand because we genetically [00:23:00] manipulated them to have that cancer.
And then we knock out that gene and we go, wow, look, we've cured cancer, but it doesn't mean anything. Okay? Because that was a mouse in a laboratory. It's not a human developing cancer in the natural world and just doesn't translate. And so just all of the wasted time talent research, it's terrible. The time, talent, research, money, opportunity cost, all that time, opportunity, cost could have been invested.
Those millions or billions into something that's more human relevant. Something that has a greater chance of producing something that's gonna be safe and effective in humans. And so to emphasize something you just said, so correct me that. Smoke exposure to dogs and the other animals. I think you might've said, monkeys, it doesn't cause cancer, correct?
That's correct. Yep. And no matter how hard researchers try, this is still true to this day. They have great difficulty recreating cancer from exposure to tobacco, smoke in laboratory animals. So [00:24:00] not human relevant. I can't stress that enough to my listeners, We have epidemiologic data from humans, which was strongly suggestive of the link.
We've got animal data, which was not, and which wins. It's gonna be the human data every time. And so please keep that in mind if you're hearing anything about animal studies or we need animal research. This tobacco example is a great one to keep in mind, and there are many others out there.
Drugs that looked outstanding in the animal model and were terrible or had unacceptable side effects in humans, including death sometimes and both ways. There are drugs that look like they didn't do anything. And then by a chance, a chance event or a chance of probably smart scientist who said, Hmm, maybe we should try this in a different animal or somewhere else, a different model and you discover something, okay, now we've got something.
and we would've missed out on some many drugs that we use every [00:25:00] day if we had relied purely on an animal model. So, yep. So very important. Animal research equals not human relevant research. Jeremy that's some really great information.
This research Jeremy, is that still going on? Dogs and cats trapped in labs in research? How, common is it yeah, it is still going on tragically. The best statistics that we have come from the USDA, they send out annual reports to all the research facilities and ask them, tell us how many animals you used in the last year.
And the most recent numbers I looked at, they're, admittedly it's a few years old at this point, but I think it's still around this, it was about 50,000 dogs are still used in some form of research, education, experimentation or testing each year in the United States. And we even have a fairly large industry here in the United States of breeding these dogs.
You know, these are puppy mills for the research industry, and we're talking about almost entirely [00:26:00] beagles. And beagles are the breed of choice by laboratory specifically because those dogs have been bred for centuries to be so docile and trusting, and those very same traits that make them wonderful, friendly, trusting companions.
In my mind. And it's twisted to me. it's like demented. They actually get used against them as a vulnerability to use them in painful and harmful experiments like you're describing with those masks. That's probably an inhalation toxicity experiment. God knows what they're pumping into that gas, you know, it could be cyanide gas, it could be any type of toxic gas that they're testing.
And it's absolutely heartbreaking. These are animals that we've actually bred to be our companions, and we've actually selected these dogs because they love us and they need our love and they need our affection. And instead what we do is we give them a serial number, like they're an inanimate object stuff 'em into a cage and treat them like they're a furry test tube.
And, it's [00:27:00] appalling what's happening. And I think it's something that I do think the vast majority of people are against now. I mean, I just noticed this. there's a. Pretty well known facility that you probably know about Johnny and Wisconsin called Ridgeland Farms. they breed, something like 3000 dogs a year, although it's on the verge of shutting down, thank God.
And, couple brave people went in there and openly rescued some beagles a few years ago and then released images and videos from inside this facility. And they were aired in the media. local media and I've seen on social media, on Facebook, the comments and it's just hundreds if not thousands, of people being like, how is this legal?
You know, that was the most common reaction I saw. People are just shocked when they see these images of beagle dogs and these barren wire cages spinning around endlessly because they've frankly lost their minds from being in this environment of this loud shed, metal shed of thousands of barking dogs without anyone showing them any love or affection.
And people are just shocked that that's [00:28:00] even allowed. And, you know, some things gotta change and I think things are starting to change a little bit that yes, without outstanding animal advocates that go. And risk their own safety potentially to get this imagery that can be shared and build the support.
And as well as the attorneys and advocates everywhere getting and the media help, getting the message out, sharing this to increase knowledge of the public. It's critical to move the decision makers. Yes. And I would agree. I feel like more and more people are learning and the more people learn, I think they're saying this is unacceptable, and they're, I don't even feel like you have to necessarily be an animal advocate or dog lover.
Just, I think if you're neutral on the topic, a lot of people might be like, I don't wanna live a town that has this going on. Is there somewhere you have off the top of your head to recommend someone can go to watch one of these undercover videos
The one from Ridgeland, I think you can find on Direct [00:29:00] Action Everywhere's website also, I wanna recommend, and maybe I'm slightly biased because I helped in this reporting a little bit, but there's an article by Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. At this point, the article is probably about six years old, but it's still, I think true, I think pretty much every word of it's true, but it's called something like Inside the Secretive World of Dog Research.
And if people look that up, the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, it was a fantastic piece of journalism. That will, give you the perfect little introduction to the use of dogs and research. Also, there was last year Jane Goodall, I think it might have actually been one of the last things she ever wrote and published.
She wrote an op-ed along co-authored it with Mark Beckoff in the Washington Post that was advocating for an end to the use of dogs in research. And that Washington Post op-ed also was a fantastic piece that kind of gives a good overview of what's happening. And then there's also, of course, a few animal rights organizations like peta, who I used to work [00:30:00] for.
One of the first campaigns I was involved in at peta, there was an undercover investigation at the University of Utah. And there was a dog laboratory there at the U of U. They were using about 80 dogs a year, and heartbreaking footage came out of there and we were able to call attention to the fact that the University of Utah was actually getting the dogs that they were using in deadly experiments from local shelters.
They were going down to the Humane Society, going down to Salt Lake County Animal Services, grabbing dogs, you know, for their $20 adoption fee, and then bringing them to the laboratory and subjecting them to deadly experiments. And we got that practice ended after a long campaign. And we actually, if people really want to do a deep dive, we got these animals records because that's one thing I've learned throughout this whole process.
By the way, you know, there's this expression, you've probably heard it, that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and nowhere is that more true than the use of animals in research. Like these places really [00:31:00] depend. On secrecy and people not understanding what's really happening in those places, right? These are not places that are open to the public.
They don't want anyone to understand what's happening to the animals there. And you know, I've been involved personally in probably close to a dozen lawsuits under Freedom of Information Act or state open records laws to try to peel back this curtain a little bit. And when we did that at the U of U, we got the individual records for all these dogs, and we actually were able to look at those dogs' records and find their microchip number and then contact the microchip company and find out where these dogs came from.
And in some cases, these were people's lost dogs. There was a dog named Sonny, specifically, there was a solid Tribune article about this. They never found their dog. It was a lost dog. Animal control picked up their dog off the street. Two days later, the U of U came down. Grabbed that dog, brought them to the laboratory induced heart attacks, and that dog and killed the dog.
And we learned all this after the dog was already dead. But we [00:32:00] actually tracked down this dog's owner and said, I made that phone call. And I'm like, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but we have found Sonny and Sonny died in a laboratory. Are you aware that Sonny went to a laboratory and they didn't know any of this?
They didn't even know that Sonny ever made it into animal control's, custody. And, it was a big scandal in Salt Lake. The fact that the U of U knew this dog, had a microchip animal control, knew this dog had a microchip. No one even bothered figuring out who this dog belonged to. They just used them in a deadly experiment.
And, there was a huge public outcry. And this practice ended. And what I found interesting is as soon as the U of U stopped getting animals from shelters their use of dogs in research actually plummeted. They went from using like 80 dogs a year to like five or 10. Because the dogs had got more expensive, right?
And so they started to actually replace their use of animals with non-animal methods. They said, well, now that it's hard for us to reach and [00:33:00] grab the dog from the area shelter down the road, we're gonna use a non-animal method, which tells you something about how supposedly necessary this research is. I mean, as soon as a roadblock was put in the way that made the process a little more expensive or a little more complicated, they stopped doing it.
That's a great story, Jeremy, and fantastic detective work, for lack of a better word to bring this to light and make a significant impact on the number of dogs suffering and this shift to non-animal methods that you described. There's a lot of discussion in this space as you know, as well as I do, and a phrase that I heard from a former animal researcher who has now moved on and is advocating like you and I are to end the practice
he believes that you have to move the cheese if you wanna get their researchers to change what they're doing. Their [00:34:00] paychecks come as you pointed out, from doing the same experiments over and over again, that yield nothing. Right. If you were to change instantly and say, okay, if you wanna keep your paycheck, this is what you're gonna do.
Now they'll change. Right? This lab did it almost on a dime. I mean, it probably wasn't that fast, but they realized, Hey, we don't have a way to make a profit doing this anymore, or it's gonna be more costly. Whatever that type of reasoning is, sounds like they knew there were other options.
And they shifted to 'em. The researchers, they follow the money, frankly. You know, wherever the grants are, that's where the research is gonna follow that. I mean, and we've seen this historically, like right after nine 11, you had the anthrax scare, if you remember that. And after that happened, there was this boom in the use of animals research and really just.
Biomedical research in general studying the effects of anthrax because that was what was on the public's mind and everyone was all concerned about anthrax. So, hey, if you want to [00:35:00] get some of that grant money, find a way to shoehorn your research into helping understand anthrax and people just follow those kinds of trends.
in the 1980s, it was hiv aids. And sometimes this is, you know, an understandable reason, right? I mean, you had the HIV epidemic, that was a, obviously a real thing that was affecting people. But what really drove the research community wasn't necessarily just the mortality and morbidity of that pandemic.
It was frankly the politics and the fact that's where the research dollars were. If that's where the research dollars are, that's where they're gonna go. And a lot of this, those are great examples. I love them. And they come in part from, like you said, public outrage. I know the media coverage of hiv aids, when it was expanding, it was everywhere.
It was talked about and lawmakers seized on that and they put money into it. And even more recent example when I was practicing is COVID the [00:36:00] pandemic as any medical practitioner who reads literature and keeps up. I can tell you the medical literature shifted. I'm sure it did.
It was very difficult. to find anything in the journals other than COVID. Heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer Parkinson's, whatever, you know, general internal medicine Journal, Was heavily favored for that. And even my infectious disease. Subspecialty journals, which are normally staph infections, c diff endocarditis, joint infections.
It was almost a hundred percent COVID. Right. And there was an awareness of it that those holding the purse strings presumably said, Hey, we gotta fund this, we gotta take care of it. And you know, as rapidly as I've ever seen, we had an antiviral available, we had vaccines available and researchers were shifting their time because they had their shifting what they're doing.
'cause they had their cheese moved. Exactly. They said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start doing this. And guess [00:37:00] what? Smart researchers with money. Time and the technology, they're gonna get it done. And I feel like that's applicable to where we are right now. Right? Yeah, I think so too. a shift of money is one important thing that, can change this game and start getting more human relevant research that's gonna get safer and more effective drugs into doctor's hands more quickly.
Yep. And we're starting to see some, really promising policy changes, I think, too, that I do hope endure beyond this administration. I mean that you have the FDA no longer has a rigid requirement for testing on animals, for new drugs, and that's actually a good thing. I mean that has been a requirement I think people need to understand since 1962.
Okay. That's when ironically what spurned that change was thalidomide. Which never came on the market in the United States, but came on the market in Canada and a few other places. And we were so worried about what happened [00:38:00] in thalidomide that we said we need more pre-marketing, safety testing of pharmaceuticals.
So we're gonna make everyone test them on animals. And what's so ironic about that is that the birth defect that's caused by thalidomide exposure fo, you don't even see that in most laboratory animals. So the laboratory animal testing wouldn't have even helped predict that. You don't see that in rats.
Okay. You don't see that in monkeys. So that form of preclinical testing wouldn't have even helped stave off the thalidomide disaster. But that was what people thought. And the other thing to realize is 1962 is. Over 60 years ago, and technology's changed a lot. We have way more sophisticated methods of computer modeling for drug testing and in silico methods.
In vitro methods pharmacogenomics, I mean, this was even before the Human Genome project, right? The 1960s. We didn't understand that drugs worked in that molecular level and that genetic level that they do. So our understanding is so much more [00:39:00] sophisticated now than it was in 1962, but the regulations never got updated right until very recently with the FDA Modernization Act.
And that was frankly long overdue. But you can see that things are starting to slowly move in a good direction, I think and people aren't quite as set in their ways as they have been for too long. Yeah. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 cleared the path, so to speak, for saying we don't have to have animal data first.
Something I think important to point out is a lot of the discussion around bringing in these non-animal methods involves getting them validated for use, it's accurate, it predicts, it says the information you get is valid and it can be applied elsewhere. it's reproducible.
And that's an important standard to have in mind. However, it's important to remember a lot of the animal tests that we've been relying on for decades haven't been validated either they're done because that's all we [00:40:00] had to use, And now that we have decades worth of data, we can see how terrible most of them are.
How terrible. I'm not a neurologist, but I've read some, the neurodegenerative disease models. For diseases. You may be familiar with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's the A LS Lou Gehrig's disease, they're horrible. And those are just a few examples. You can culture A human liver cell and you can expose it to whatever agents you want. Agents say that you think have toxicity or you know, have toxicity and you can observe the human cell and see if you are right or not. And Right. We have that. Capability and it's growing into more complex models.
And as Jeremy said before, I just wanted to touch on creating a disease in an animal where it doesn't happen naturally or it takes lots of time to develop, if you [00:41:00] don't have the underlying physiology right for why that disease is happening, how are you gonna expect to have a good treatment?
stroke, for example, is an easy one. So stroke in humans typically happens as the gradual development of clogging of the arteries in the neck or higher up in the brain, usually over decades. Now, if you go into a lab human or animal for that matter, and you just sever one of those arteries or tie it off to create a stroke, and then you look at treatments for it, guess what?
It's a different underlying pathophysiology. As a scientist, you wouldn't expect that to work, right? You wouldn't expect that if you don't have the underlying cause for the disease. Right. if you do find something, it's gonna be Sherlock or coincidence. Yes. And that's a big problem with the basic flawed model system for so many animal models.
You try to [00:42:00] recreate it in the lab. It's not the same as what's happening in humans. It's no surprise that the failure rate is well north of 90% and not only is it not the same in humans. The other thing that I have found, and this happens in the fields of cancer research, in stroke research, really in almost any of these areas of disease research, because you artificially created this sort of form of the disease that often has differences, actually important differences between the disease in humans.
And this goes back to what that quote I mentioned earlier from Dr. Richard Klausner at the National Cancer Institute.
It's super easy to cure mice of cancer. If you're the one who inserted the gene, which is a cancer causing gene, or if you can turn on a tumor suppressing gene that you've inserted in that mouse, you can go, lo and behold, I've cured cancer in mice. Because you understood what caused the cancer.
you created it. And even though it doesn't translate to people, [00:43:00] another engine that keeps this all going, I think is the media. Because every one of these research universities, they have a communications department. And I'm telling you, when that mouse in that laboratory was cured of that cancer, there was a press release that went out.
That said, leading cancer researchers at the University of Utah cure liver disease. And then maybe in fine print at the bottom of that press release, they'll say in mice, right? But they want to trumpet that. And I see these headlines all the time to this day. All see, leading media organizations just report as an article of faith that there's been this amazing breakthrough in cancer or whatever the line of research it is.
And it's almost always in laboratory animals. And what you don't see is the follow-up press release five years later that says, oh, by the way, the clinical trial that came out of that, in humans failure, they don't send a press release out for that one. And so the media just keeps this perception going that you have all of this promising, fruitful research because [00:44:00] that's what they're trumpeting and a lot of the public doesn't understand.
Just because you cured this rat of Alzheimer's or a disease that looks like Alzheimer's or of cancer, that actually doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't. And I'm sorry if that sounds harsh. I know people wanna have, signs of hope and there are signs of hope with good human-based research, we should have that.
But I think it actually does patients and people a disservice to lead them astray and make them think that these things mean more than they really do. Yeah, that's, absolutely true. To put it into a little bit of legal terms, if you have that treatment success in mice, more likely than not, it's gonna fail.
Way more likely than not. By far. Yep. Yeah. Jeremy, wow. We just sped through this session. I wanted to hear before we close out, please share a little bit about. The work you've done before. 'cause I know your knowledge is not all gained from being a law student.
You've done a lot before advocating for animals [00:45:00] and dogs in particular. And you sound like an expert on this topic, so please share with our listeners, just some of the work you've done, you.
Sure. So I worked for several years in PETA's laboratory investigations department. And I basically managed a lot of the organization's advocacy campaigns. So with respect to dogs, for example, we had a very large campaign against Texas a and m University because that university had this colony of dogs.
They were intentionally breeding to have canine muscular dystrophy. And we actually had a whistleblower from inside this laboratory send us heartbreaking video of these dogs, who were suffering from this debilitating condition. And this laboratory had been doing these experiments for something like 40 years without any.
Therapy or novel treatment being developed. And we were like, this needs to end. So we publicized that video and I guess you would call it like a grassroots awareness campaign.
we tried [00:46:00] to get our message out as well as we could. and we ended that dog laboratory. through a pressure campaign. And then I've also had some experience working for an organization called Beagle Freedom Project which was an advocacy campaign, but also a rescue organization where we rehomed and rehabilitated beagles who were used in laboratory experiments oftentimes.
Beagle Freedom Project would get a phone call from someone who actually works inside a laboratory who would say something like, I've been asked to euthanize these eight beagles 'cause we're done using them in a study, but I don't want to do that. You know, 'cause these people who work in laboratories too, I think it is important for people to know, a lot of them themselves are very morally conflicted with what they're doing.
And they're being told all the time that, that people like me and you are crazy anti-science nuts. So they don't want to help us. 'cause they believe that a little bit, but they also know from their own experience in the lab that what's happening in these labs is not okay. And I can't tell you the number of times [00:47:00] when I worked at peta, when I worked at Beagle Freedom Project.
I've spoken to whistleblowers from inside Animal Laboratories, probably, I don't even know, 50 times. I bet. And I can't even begin to tell you the number of times these whistleblowers told me. Now I'm not against animal research, but what's happening in my laboratory seems wrong.
And I'm just like, okay, do you know that I've heard this now from like 50 of the largest laboratories in the United States. You all think that only your lab is doing something wrong? No, it's the whole industry. that's something that people don't wanna believe. so Beagle Freedom Project would sometimes whisk these animals out the back door, so to speak, or someone inside the laboratory would work out a deal where we could take the dogs, but never publicize exactly what research laboratory they came from.
And we lobbied for legislation as well. I've done a lot of legislative work at the state level to get bills that required laboratories when they were done using dogs and research, they had to offer them for [00:48:00] adoption instead of just euthanizing them. And we passed these bills in quite a few states.
And again, one of the funny side effects that had was it resulted in a decrease in the use of dogs to begin with. When the laboratories knew that they would be under pressure for not adopting out the survivors. They didn't want to be put in that position, where they had to be subject to public scrutiny.
And so they would just not use dogs at all. And I just found that also interesting, like anytime you can apply any form of public scrutiny to what these people are doing they run away and they don't do it. Like, I truly do believe that sunlight is the best. Disinfectant is so true. the more we could get photographs or video from inside these laboratories and publicize it, it very frequently led to those practices ending.
but as long as they could stay secretive, it continued. So, yeah, I mean, I just worked in a variety of capacities and, decided a few years ago to go to law school because I wanna continue to litigate some of these issues in court, representing [00:49:00] activists maybe who are kind of on the front lines of rescuing animals, organizations who wanna get their hands on records, that kind of thing.
I always liked as an activist, all of my legal battles that I was involved with as a party. And I'm like, well, I like this so much that I think I want to do this professionally. That's what kind of led me to law school. Thanks for sharing that story, Jeremy. that's very inspirational.
And I could see the path you've gotten and it sounds like you're really, going forward with something that's deeply meaningful to you, you've found, a greater purpose. Greater than you, greater than any one person and. That's just fantastic. So, thank you personally for what you've done to help all those dogs, that's just amazing already making a difference before getting into law school, and I just can't wait to see what you're gonna do to help animals going forward.
I would not wanna be on the other side of a case you're litigating. Aw, shucks. Thank you. Closing up here. what can we impart with our listeners? Is there anything they can do as [00:50:00] someone who's not gonna be litigating, someone who's not already part of a nonprofit, someone who's not gonna go and remove a dog from a horrible situation or a monkey.
Is there something they can do to support your efforts and efforts of others in this space? Yeah. To make their voice heard and help keep this rolling in the right direction and get some change sooner rather than later. Yeah. I think a good first step for anyone out there is just to educate yourself on the issues, and you can start with organization.
Like, I used to work for PETA Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, but don't just take them at their word because people aren't gonna believe those sources. So dig deeper. If you can take the time to look at some of the authors who have written interesting work in this area. I mentioned that Glenn Greenwald article, and then network with like-minded people.
I don't have a specific point of action for every listener on here, but I think whatever action they take, it involves the power of the people. And, you know, Johnny, you and I live here in Portland. There's a big effort right now [00:51:00] that looks like it's on the path to victory, I think to close the primate center here.
Yes. And which is amazing.it's just spectacular what PETA and a lot of those organizations have been doing to close that horrible place. but it's also been powered by people, right?
I mean, I wasn't here five years ago, but I would speculate probably compared to five years ago. They're much more in the sunlight now. Yep, exactly. And then the very last thing that I would say is, it's not related to dogs and laboratories, but one of the things that keeps me going is directly helping animals firsthand as much as possible.
So I love to volunteer at animal shelters, animal sanctuaries. There's several farm animal sanctuaries here in the Pacific Northwest that I volunteer at. Find your local animal shelter and go walk some dogs. You know, I guarantee you there's dogs kept in kennels that would just love the opportunity for you to take them for a walk.
That is something that we can all go out and do tomorrow, and I just think making those kinds of connections with individual animals it's a little indirect, but that's what keeps me going and I think it keeps everyone going because it reminds you who we're fighting for. [00:52:00] That's a great close,
Jeremy, thank you so much for being on my show.
This was fun. I learned a lot. I just can't thank you enough for your time. Of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. It was great.