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Fact Check: Was Dr. Oz Responsible for Cruelly Experimenting on Dogs?

Allegations have circulated implicating Oz in the cruel treatment of animals at Columbia University. PEOPLE talked to a former Columbia employee and sifted through reports to clarify his role

Dr. Mehmet Oz — the TV personality turned Pennsylvania Republican candidate for U.S. Senate — is once again making headlines, this time for resurfaced claims that he experimented on dogs while a practicing heart surgeon at Columbia University.

On Monday, Jezebel reported the allegation that Oz oversaw medical research in which dogs were abused and killed for studies published between 1989 and 2010. After the Jezebel article was published, Oz's opponent in the Pennsylvania Senate race — Democrat John Fetterman — tweeted a link to the piece with the comment, "BREAKING: Dr. Oz is a puppy killer."

But is there evidence to support claims that Oz was, as the Jezebel article states, involved in research that "inflicted significant suffering" on animals used in experiments?

PEOPLE spoke with veterinarian Catherine Dell'Orto, who says that within weeks of her start as a post-doctoral fellow in the research labs at Columbia's Institute of Comparative Medicine in July 2001, she was horrified by what she saw.

Dell'Orto tells PEOPLE she witnessed the inhumane treatment of dogs in lab experiments investigating aspects of heart function over which Oz served in the role of "principal investigator" — including leaving dogs in pain and paralyzed for weeks, with no discernible research benefit, before they were euthanized or died.

"When someone makes the choice to use an animal in a research experiment they should be 100 percent committed to reducing any suffering that animal will experience," says Dell'Orto. "And I did not see that happening with Oz. I saw the opposite."

Dell'Orto — who says she quickly raised her concerns with a senior veterinarian — did not see Oz in the labs performing any of the dog experiments, which she says were directly conducted instead by Ph.D. students and post-doctoral fellows.

When PEOPLE reached out to Oz's Senate campaign team for comment, spokesperson Brittany Yannick said in an email: "Dr. Oz was not personally involved in these incidents and to say otherwise is a lie. His name was on some forms due to his role within the Department of Surgery."

Columbia's website says that when one is named principal investigator of a research study, he or she "has overall responsibility for safety and compliance in his or her laboratory."

Dell'Orto said some principal investigators actually did come into the lab and directly oversee their animals' care, putting themselves in a position to ensure minimal suffering. With Oz, she says, "There were no endpoints. What I saw was abuse."

Dell'Orto says she has no personal knowledge to support online claims that research puppies cried out in pain as they were killed with no anesthesia. She says another lab worker, a veterinary technician whom she identified by name, claimed to have witnessed this, though PEOPLE has been unable to get in contact with the person alleged to be behind these claims.

It is that veterinary technician's account, says Dell'Orto, which PETA relied upon in a letter the group allegedly wrote to the USDA in 2003 . That letter recounted a complaint, from an unidentified whistle blower, that "a litter of fully conscious puppies" was placed in a plastic bag and killed with expired euthanasia medication injected directly into their hearts, and that the puppies "cried out as they received the IC injection" because it was done without any prior pain killer.

But Oz himself is not mentioned in this letter, nor is he mentioned in the USDA's $2,000 settlement agreement with Columbia in 2004 — a settlement which explicitly states that Columbia neither admits nor denies the USDA's allegation.

"The puppies killed in the bag were killed by a vet tech," not by Oz, Dell'Orto tells PEOPLE, noting she does not know if the puppies were part of an Oz-led study or one led by another principal investigator.

"But," she says, "there are a lot of valid things he did wrong."

During the period of time that Dell'Orto says she raised questions about the school's treatment of research animals, Oz was a cardiothoracic surgeon and Columbia University professor of surgery, as well as director of the Cardiovascular Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Dell'Orto tells PEOPLE that before she resigned in February of 2003, she saw about 30 dogs upon whom research was performed as part of procedures for which Oz was principal investigator.

She says she saw some of these dogs' chests opened so that pacemakers could be inserted into their hearts, "pacing them at a very high rate to induce heart failure."

Then, she says, "they were doing different treatments to see what worked."

"I didn't think it was good science," Dell'Orto says. "I didn't think the results that came from such experiments were worthy of adding to the scientific database. It was so poorly done."

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She says she also saw some of these dogs left paralyzed for days or weeks, apparently suffering and in pain before death via euthanasia. They'd lose more than 20% of their body weight and were left struggling to breathe, she says, adding that in her opinion, the study "was not designed" to promptly euthanize dogs at the point that the experiments became inhumane.

PEOPLE asked Oz's campaign team to respond to claims that the experiments for which he was principal investigator were conducted poorly and in many cases inhumane. Yannick, his spokesperson, responded: "While Dr. Oz was busy operating on human lives, researchers and veterinarians were in the Columbia University research labs finding new approaches to treat patients with atrial fibrillation which impacts millions of Americans."

She continued: "Dr. Oz was not in the operating room when the operations were done, he wasn't present during the post-op treatments, no one alerted him of the problem until after the cases were finished and he does not condone the mistreatment of animals."

Back at Columbia, Dell'Orto says she took her concerns — backed up with photocopies she made of three dogs' lab records with Oz as P.I. — to the administrator for the university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in October of 2002. (She says thedetail of the lab records she provided are now available online as part of a PETA site titled "Columbia University Cruelty.") These included dogs in Oz-led research. With one, Dell'Orto says she saw that from two days after painful surgery till the pup was euthanized, the dog, labeled 6269, was vomiting and unable to stand up, with bloody urine. Another dog was kept alive for 29 days post-operatively despite being paralyzed and with no clear research benefit, says Dell'Orto.

"Horrible things that went on," she says. "I mean, they just were not cared for properly. They were not given proper pain medications."

Columbia set up a committee to investigate these concerns as well as other concerns she had about stroke research on baboons.

Dell'Orto then contacted the USDA, which oversees compliance with the Animal Welfare Act. And to make sure that the issue stayed at the forefront, she says she also contacted PETA.

By February 2003, Dell'Orto says she quit her job at Columbia. "I was shunned at that point," she says, "and I thought I could be more productive with a different job."

She worked for a small animal clinic in Ardsley, New York, and a year later moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she still lives, working with horses.

But her complaint led to several findings. An April 22, 2003, report by Columbia — which was obtained by PEOPLE — found that two of the three dogs used in Oz's research, for which Dell'Orto had provided records, received "inadequate or questionable veterinary care."

One dog — whose chest was opened (called a sternotomy) and received radiofrequency ablation on July 17, 2002 — developed paralysis, lethargy, vomiting and renal failure, suffering for a week. But "the records do not show why the animal was kept alive" until euthanized a week later, on July 24.

Another dog, which underwent the same procedure on July 11, 2002, "was in chronic distress (paralyzed in hindquarters)" but kept alive for 29 days until euthanized.

"The records did not contain a rationale for keeping the animal alive in a paralyzed condition for a prolonged period of time," the investigative committee wrote.

We need to ban animal testing. Dr. Oz’s killing over 300 dogs is a perfect example of why.

A member of the Humane Society of the United States carries a beagle into the organization's care and rehabilitation center.

On Monday, Jezebel reported that from 1989 to 2010, research by Dr. Mehmet Oz — the television personality and Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania — inflicted suffering on and killed over 300 dogs, 31 pigs and 661 rabbits and rodents. It was during Oz’s time as a principal investigator at a Columbia University lab.

Ironically, the discovery comes on the heels of the Senate’s unanimously passing the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 last week. The measure would eliminate a federal mandate in the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requiring animal testing for new drugs. Drug developers would be permitted to use alternative methods to test for safety if this reform becomes law. That’s good news, but there should be a bill that ends animal testing altogether. Perhaps the latest news about Oz, playing out on the national stage, will hammer that point home.

For context, the Humane Society estimates that over 50 million animals are used in laboratory experiments every year in the U.S. The Animal Welfare Act minimally protects some species. Still, as is alleged with Oz, violations routinely occur , and most animals tested are not covered .

In these experiments, animals are exposed to toxic chemicals or diseases and imprisoned in barren cages . They are usually killed after experiments are completed.

Despite these grim realities, advocates of testing on animals argue that it is critical for medical developments and treatments in humans. To bolster their position, proponents of animal testing point to important discoveries throughout history in which animal research was involved. For example, in 1921, researchers Frederick G. Banting, Charles Best and John Macleod demonstrated that we could treat diabetes with insulin by performing experiments on laboratory dogs who had their pancreatic ducts tied; in 1939, a group of scientists discovered the antibiotic effect of Penicillium by infecting mice with a virulent strain of Streptococcus and then treating half of them with the Penicillium mold; in 1953, Jonas Salk produced the first inactivated polio vaccine using a virus grown on monkey kidney cells.

Moreover, those in favor of animal experimentation argue that substances that have not been first tested on animals at all or thoroughly enough pose threats to humans. One purported cautionary development occurred in the late 1950s and the early 1960s with thalidomide . Originally designed to be a sedative, it was found to have other healing effects. This “ wonder drug “ was found to help pregnant women with the symptoms of morning sickness. However, thalidomide had not been tested on pregnant animals .

Thousands of pregnant women took the drug internationally (it was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but as many as 20,000 people in the U.S. were given the drug as part of a clinical trial, according to a New York Times report ).

A deeper dive into these claims reveals that animal testing is not all it is cracked up to be and that it may actually be hindering medical progress.

Sadly, it turned out that thalidomide can cause major birth defects, specifically in babies’ limbs, bones, ears, eyes and hearts , and can also lead to pregnancy loss or infant death. The drug was taken off the market, but the damage was done. According to one report , an estimated 24,000 babies were born with thalidomide-induced malformations worldwide, and 123,000 stillbirths and miscarriages were caused by the drug. Reflecting on this tragedy, one scientist noted that “had there been more extensive testing on laboratory animals before the drug was launched, the disaster could have been avoided.”

But a deeper dive into these claims reveals that animal testing is not all it is cracked up to be and that it may actually be hindering medical progress.

It is worth noting at the outset that a lot of experiments involving the use of animals are so poorly designed that their results are meaningless. One analysis found that among 2,671 papers from 1992 to 2011 that reported trials in animals, randomization was not reported in 75% of them, blinding was absent in 70%, and fewer than 1% and 12% had sample-size calculations and conflict of interest statements, respectively — all factors that can lead to inaccurate results.

And even when the studies are designed reasonably well, the results do not usually hold up in humans. A 2004 FDA report found that 92% of drugs that pass the animal testing stage are ultimately abandoned .

So why, then, does animal experimentation often accompany breakthroughs in medicine? According to Dr. John J. Pippin , a former animal experimenter who is now the director of academic affairs at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a research and advocacy organization that promotes alternatives to animal research, it is essentially chance: “It may reasonably be stated that most medical advances have included animal experimental use; for decades, this has been the default approach. But it has not been demonstrated that such animal use has been essential or even reliable for medical advancement.”

Defenders of animal testing often argue that while it may be imperfect, it is our only option for advancing human medicine. This view neglects how differences in the bodies of species can lead to misleading information — which can be worse than no information. In addition, it ignores the reality of alternatives already available that are based on human biology and have the potential to increase research relevance and deliver more reliable risk assessments while maintaining existing safety levels.

One of these breakthrough technologies is advanced data computing. A 2018 Johns Hopkins study suggested that scientists could use large databases of known chemicals to predict a new chemical’s toxic properties better than tests on animals.

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Another viable alternative is organs-on-a-chip , or “organoids,” miniature tissues and organs in-vitro that enable modeling of human physiology and disease. Lung, liver, kidney, gut, skin, brain, heart and other organ chips have all been developed . They present many game-changing possibilities, including simulating particular diseases, such as cancer or heart disease, and providing researchers with a cost-effective way to evaluate the impacts of drugs in real time.

Other viable in-vitro methods include the use of “ biobanks ,” biological samples often left over from clinical procedures, such as surgery, or from dead bodies; technologies that use stem cells ; and even 3D printing . While some of these promising technologies are in their infancy, imagine what could be accomplished if the billions of dollars wasted on animal testing were allocated toward further advancing them.

Perhaps for all of these reasons, a 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that a growing majority of Americans oppose using animals in experiments. But for this projected boom in non-animal testing methods to catch up with public opinion, funding and regulatory bodies will need to explore a shift in focus, going well beyond the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. The fate of both animal and human life depends on it.

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Dr. Mehmet Oz, the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, campaigns in Malvern, Pa., on Oct. 15, 2022. (AP)

Fact-checking Democrats’ claim about dog deaths in Mehmet Oz’s heart research lab

If your time is short.

Dr. Mehmet Oz’s campaign does not dispute a report that more than 300 dogs were euthanized in a heart research lab he supervised.

We did not find evidence of widespread pain and suffering among the dogs in the Columbia University lab.

The ad’s focus on a dog known as 6313 is misleading. An internal investigation by Columbia said "appropriate veterinary care" was given to this animal.

An ad from a Democratic super PAC accuses Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania’s pivotal U.S. Senate race, of animal cruelty.

The 30-second spot is from Senate Majority PAC, which is supporting the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. The Nov. 8 contest, which rates as a toss-up, could decide which party controls the Senate, which is split 50-50.

The ad uses video clips, labeled as generic footage of animal testing, that show dogs in cages, and clips of Oz in a lab coat and what appear to be notes from a log.

"She wasn’t given a name, only a number — 6313," the narrator says. "For 29 days, she suffered in Mehmet Oz’s lab, leaking blood, not eating, struggling to breathe. Twenty-nine days of unimaginable pain and suffering, until Oz took her for the last experiment. Just one of 300 dogs killed in Oz’s lab. Mehmet Oz is unfit to be Pennsylvania’s senator."

The words "Dr. Oz’s killing over 300 dogs" appear on the screen, attributed to NBC News. But the words are not from a news report; they are part of a headline on an opinion column written by a professor that was published on NBC’s website.

Another Senate Majority PAC TV ad made the same claim against Oz.

Oz’s campaign did not dispute a report that more than 300 dogs were euthanized during experiments between 1989 and 2010 in a Columbia University research lab Oz supervised. "The operations in the research lab were carried out by Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows, and the animals were cared for by veterinarians," Oz campaign spokesperson Brittany Yanick said.

We did not find evidence that dogs were routinely subjected to "unimaginable pain and suffering." An internal investigation by Columbia found that the dog highlighted in the ad, known as 6313, received "adequate veterinary care."

The allegations date back 20 years to lab experiments at Columbia involving dogs and other animals that Oz, a heart surgeon, and other cardiac researchers supervised.

News reports about the allegations against Oz were published in September and October.

On Sept. 13, the Philadelphia news outlet Billy Penn reported that Oz was directing a research program at Columbia when it agreed in 2004 to a settlement with the U.S. Agriculture Department to resolve animal abuse claims.

The three-page settlement agreement , which did not mention Oz, fined Columbia $2,000.

Featured Fact-check

The agreement was based on an internal investigation by Columbia that was spurred by allegations from a whistleblower in the lab, Catherine Dell’Orto.

Dell’Orto told PolitiFact she does not know whether the 300 figure is accurate, but that the number of dogs euthanized does not signal animal abuse.

Dell’Orto said Oz was responsible for the tests conducted in his lab. She said dogs suffering pain is part of lab testing, but that the lab Oz oversaw did not design tests to limit suffering and caused suffering by waiting unnecessarily long to euthanize some dogs.

Dell’Orto told Billy Penn the experiments were meant to "model human cardiac failure" and to assess treatments.

Logs showed that puppies were not properly sedated before being euthanized and that an outdated euthanasia solution was used. Also, paperwork did not show that a dog exercise plan was approved by the attending veterinarian.

Oz’s campaign provided to PolitiFact the 22-page internal investigation report from Columbia, which covered Oz and other researchers. The report said that under Oz’s supervision,"appropriate veterinary care" was given to dog 6313, and that "inadequate or questionable veterinary care" was given to two other dogs. The report said lab records did not say why the two other dogs were kept alive — one for two days and the other for nearly a month — after being paralyzed.

The references in the ad to dog 6313 leaking blood and struggling to breathe were from a summary published by the advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Billy Penn reported that before the settlement, PETA had complained of abuse of baboons and dogs at Columbia after being contacted by Dell’Orto.

In October, the news and cultural commentary website Jezebel reported that, based on studies in academic journals Oz published from 1989 to 2010, experiments Oz supervised resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs.

Oz’s campaign said Oz "never abused any animals" and noted that the whistleblower said Oz was not involved in euthanizing dogs.

Senate Majority PAC said a dog endured "unimaginable pain and suffering" during heart research experiments, "just one of 300 killed in (Dr. Mehmet) Oz’s lab."

The ad’s focus on a dog known as 6313 is misleading. An internal investigation by Columbia University said "appropriate veterinary care" was given to this animal, which suffered loss of blood and difficulty breathing. The investigation said lab records did not say why two other dogs in Oz’s experiments were kept alive, one for two days and one for three weeks, after being paralyzed.

On the bigger issue of dog deaths, Oz’s campaign did not dispute a published report that more than 300 dogs were euthanized during experiments in a Columbia research lab Oz supervised from 1989 to 2010. The campaign said other researchers conducted the tests and provided veterinary care in the lab.

The ad’s claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

Read About Our Process

The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter

Our Sources

Twitter, Jacob Rubashkin tweet , Oct. 11, 2022

Email, Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Veronica Yoo, Oct. 14, 2022

Email, Mehmet Oz campaign spokesperson Brittany Yanick, Oct. 14, 2022

Interview, Catherine Dell’Orto, Oct. 17, 2022

Columbia University, letter to U.S. Agriculture Department, April 22, 2003

Politico, "New ads attack Mehmet Oz for animal abuse," Oct. 12, 2022

Fox News, "Dem super PAC targets Oz with attack ads based on 'puppy killer' claims," Oct. 12, 2022

CNN, "Top Democratic super PAC to air ads on animal cruelty accusations against Oz," Oct. 11, 2022

BillyPenn, "The facts about the animal abuse allegations surrounding Senate candidate Mehmet Oz," Sept. 13, 2022

Internet Archive, U.S. Agriculture Department-Columbia University settlement agreement , May 12, 2004

Internet Archive, PETA "Oz Dog # 6313" post , accessed Oct. 16, 2022

Jezebel, "Dr. Oz’s Scientific Experiments Killed Over 300 Dogs, Entire Litter of Puppies," Oct. 3, 2022

Internet Archive, PETA letter to U.S. Agriculture Department , Nov. 30, 2004

Philadelphia Inquirer, "Mehmet Oz is facing accusations of animal abuse tied to his medical research. Here’s what you need to know," updated Oct. 4, 2022

NBC News, "We need to ban animal testing. Dr. Oz’s killing over 300 dogs is a perfect example of why," Oct. 3, 2022

People, "Fact Check: Was Dr. Oz Responsible for Cruelly Experimenting on Dogs?" , Oct. 4, 2022

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The facts about the animal abuse allegations surrounding Senate candidate Mehmet Oz

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Read the news of the day in less than 10 minutes — not that we’re counting.

Rumors that U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz abused puppies during his time at Columbia University have been rampant lately on social media.

The claim almost sounds made up — as if detractors wanted to find the least defensible thing about the Republican nominee for senator from Pennsylvania. But is it valid? Like many internet memes, there appears to be some truth mixed with possible exaggeration or assumption.

Mehmet Oz was investigated & fined for his sick & abusive experiments on dogs. Among his violations, he pumped injections into puppies hearts without sedation. People noted the puppies screams could be heard through closed doors, then he left them dead in a plastic garbage bag. — Kyla in the Burgh 🏴‍☠️🔥 (@KylaInTheBurgh) September 9, 2022

Allegations that spread over the past few days, like a now viral tweet that explicitly states Oz himself “pumped injections into puppies hearts without sedation” are incorrect. No documents from the time corroborate the claim, and neither do people who were there.

“It wasn’t him that did the euthanasia of the puppies,” Catherine Dell’Orto, then a postdoctoral veterinary fellow at Columbia, told Billy Penn. Dell’Orto was the one who blew the whistle on studies that she says “were very badly done.”

The Senate candidate was in fact the director of a research program at Columbia when it agreed to settle animal abuse claims with the USDA.

Dell’Orto believes the settlement amount was too small — just $2,000 — and based on a faulty internal review. She said her claims about the abuse of dogs were ignored, both by the USDA and Sulli Popilskis, the head veterinarian involved in the research.

Popilskis, now at the City University of New York, told Billy Penn he didn’t recall the details of the allegations.

“It’s a very unfortunate issue, it’s easy to publish anything and have it spread,” he said, in regard to the current social media uproar. He added that he has the “greatest respect” for Oz as a cardiovascular surgeon, saying Oz has “always been on the frontline of advancing [heart health].”

The Oz campaign did not respond to a request for comment. So what’s the full story? Here’s what we know.

What was going on at Columbia?

In 2002, when Oz was the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Dell’Orto went public with allegations of animal mistreatment in medical research testing, and activism nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) waged a public campaign.

The primary allegation was abuse towards primates, according to the now-archived website columbiacruelty.com and a later student newspaper op-ed by a PETA-affiliated doctor recounting the circumstance. This fits with the recollection of Dell’Orto, the post doc at the time.

But it was the treatment of puppies that inserted Oz into the controversy. The 62-year-old first gained renown as a cardiovascular surgeon, and has contributed to multiple studies on cardiac function in dogs .

At Columbia, the experiments in question were meant to “model human cardiac failure,” per Dell’Orto. The dogs’ hearts were paced quickly for “six to eight weeks,” and then various treatments attempted to bring them back to proper heart function.

“There was no [humane] endpoint, major, multiple survival surgeries for these dogs. They suffered quite a bit prior to death, and a lot of them were just found dead in the cages,” Dell’Orto said.

“He was the principal investigator on these experiments,” she said of Oz.

After trying to bring attention to the issue through internal channels at Columbia and then the USDA, Dell’Orto said, she contacted PETA in 2002. She first told them about the treatment of macaques and baboons — and followed up later with details about the pups.

A 2003 letter from Mary Beth Sweetland, then director of PETA’s Research & Investigations Department, describes an incident involving a number of puppies:

“According to the complainant, a litter of fully conscious puppies was placed in a plastic bag and killed with an intracardiac (IC) injection of expired Beuthanasia-D…. According to the complainant, the puppies cried out as they received the IC injection because it is, of course, very painful and should not be done without first anesthetizing the animals.”

Oz is not mentioned in a series of these letters until after the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Columbia reached a settlement for $2,000 in the spring of 2004.

The settlement was based on an internal investigation by Columbia’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The USDA accepted their findings, but Dell’Orto believes the review itself was faulty.

“That internal review had investigators on the committee that were also complicit in this type of poorly designed, cruel animal experimentation,” she recalled.

The committee’s findings, listed in the settlement agreement, don’t all pertain to dogs. The ones that do are dated October 2003:

“Pups whelped from a dog being used in a research study were euthanised with outdated euthanasia solution; drug use logs indicate the pups were not properly sedated at the time as claimed by person administering euthanasia.”
“Dog exercise plan does not provide evidence that plan is approved by the attending veterinarian.”

Documented breaks from protocol found in a November 2003 review include “the improper administration of an injectable euthanasia agent.” This violation didn’t explicitly mention dogs, but the misuse of euthanasia wasn’t alleged in the case of the primates — their reported abuse came from the conditions of their containment and experimental practices, some of which they were not properly anesthesized for.

Oz’s culpability, and the fallout

Administering euthanasia is rarely, if ever, left to department leaders or directors like Oz was at the time, Dell’Orto acknowledged. But she still feels he’s culpable.

“When your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there’s a problem,” she said.

Another letter from then-PETA investigations director Sweetland that followed the USDA settlement in the fall of 2004 does call out the current Senate candidate by name.

“Dr. Oz … is responsible for the extreme suffering endured by dogs used in his heart experiments,” the letter states. “Columbia’s IACUC appears to have approved these highly invasive and stressful experiments without demanding a humane endpoint for the animals.”

In the letter, Sweetland recaps the last 29 days in the life of a dog used in one of Oz’s experiments, based on what she describes as 6,313 records from the dog’s file. After weeks of improper eating, urination, bowel movements, and wound care, the last day is described.

“Day 29: Does not want to come out of cage, right hind leg swollen; catheter out; chewed through [tube], not eating, breathing very labored, no stool, tried to feed-will not eat anything; p.m. [Mehmet Oz] took for last experiment” (brackets PETA’s).

The USDA did not follow up on the later allegations from 2004, and neither did Columbia’s internal review.

According to a letter published by PETA, when Dell’Orto took her worries to then-head veterinarian Popilskis, replied “‘You still don’t understand do you? It’s all political.’”

The letter explains that “Dell’Orto understood this to mean that Oz could do whatever he wanted without being questioned because of his celebrity status.”

Asked about this by Billy Penn, Popilski noted that PETA is not a reliable source of information. The organization does have a reputation for being overzealous, if not dishonest , in its claims. But Dell’Orto was impressed with their professionalism when she worked with them.

“I didn’t find them lying about anything. Everything I had documentation [on], what I said, that is pretty much what they regurgitated and tried to get into the news.”

The result of the fairly light USDA settlement fine may have had a more subtle impact, Dell’Orto said: affecting future research grants for Oz: “I believe it was the NIH [National Institutes of Health] that stopped funding a lot of Dr. Oz’s work.”

Jordan Levy

Jordan Levy is a general assignment reporter at Billy Penn, always aiming to help Philadelphians share their stories. Formerly, he has worked at Document Journal, n+1 Magazine, and The New Republic. He... More by Jordan Levy

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Investigation finds research led by Penn graduate Dr. Oz to have killed over 300 dogs

dr-oz-photo-by-world-economic-forum-cc-by-sa-2-0

Mehmet Oz — better known as TV personality Dr. Oz, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania — was found to be the “principal investigator” in a series of studies that killed more than 300 dogs.

Jezebel' s investigation reviewed 75 studies conducted at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs, where Oz, a 1986 Perelman and Wharton graduate, had “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of the research.

Dogs, pigs, and calves were among the “at least 1,027 live animal subjects.” In addition to the 329 dogs, 31 pigs and 661 rabbits and rodents were killed.

Oz is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon and was once the vice chair of Columbia’s Department of Surgery, although the university appeared to cut ties with him in January.

Dr. Oz will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in November’s Senate general election

Penn graduate Dr. Oz announces candidacy for Pennsylvania's Senate seat

Billy Penn conducted a recent investigation into Oz’s time at Columbia, as well as the fallout over the experiments. The investigation surrounded a claim from 2002, when Oz was the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Catherine Dell’Orto, a veterinarian at the time, testified that Oz’s team violated the Animal Welfare Act by waiting two days to euthanize a dog that suffered from “lethargy, vomiting, paralysis and kidney failure.”

Dell’Orto also said that one study allegedly killed a litter of puppies after they received an unsedated direct injection of expired drugs to their hearts. After they were killed, Jezebel reports, “the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates.”

Dr. Oz has a lengthy history of controversy. Questions surrounding his medical legitimacy came to a head in 2015, when a group of 10 physicians led by Henry Miller of Stanford University called for Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to fire him.

This appeal came months after he appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security in June 2014, facing scrutiny for his history of endorsing “miracle” weight loss products.

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Despite his track record , Oz has participated in politics before. In 2018, former President Donald Trump appointed Oz to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.

This fall, he will face Democratic candidate Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the race for Pennsylvania’s open seat in the U.S. Senate. Fetterman, who is known for his social media presence , wrote on Twitter : “BREAKING: Dr. Oz is a puppy killer.” As election day approaches, the most recent polls show Fetterman up 5.8 points.

Oz has not yet commented on these allegations.

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Dr. oz conducted experiments that killed 329 dogs and 31 pigs: report.

ONE SICK PUPPY

AJ McDougall

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Dr. Mehmet Oz, the GOP’s Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, has for nearly two decades been dogged by rumors of past animal abuse. The New Jersey celebrity doctor was once a principal investigator at a Columbia University lab—and, Jezebel reported Monday, conducted research that led to the deaths of 329 dogs. The outlet surveyed 75 of Oz’s studies published between 1989 and 2010, also finding that 31 pigs were killed in two other experiments, while 661 rabbits and rodents were killed in 38 more studies. In May 2004, while Oz was a professor at Columbia’s medical school, the university paid a $2,000 federal fine for alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act tied to his research. (Earlier this year, The Daily Beast reported that Columbia quietly cut public ties with Oz.) It was not immediately clear how many animals Oz interacted with or may have directly mistreated. But, as whistleblower and veterinarian Catherine Dell’Orto told a Philadelphia outlet last month, “When your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there’s a problem.

Pennsylvania

Mehmet Oz is facing accusations of animal abuse tied to his medical research. Here’s what you need to know.

Questions over treatment of animals in research that Oz oversaw at Columbia date back to the early 2000s. But there's no evidence that the Senate candidate personally mistreated any animals.

Dr. Mehmet Oz talks to the media after accepting an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police in September, during a ceremony at the FOP headquarters in Philadelphia.

Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, is facing accusations over his treatment of animals following a report that dozens of his experiments at Columbia University resulted in the deaths of hundreds of dogs.

The issue went viral after Jezebel published a report about Oz’s time at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs, where he served as a “principal investigator” for a number of years. Since then, Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, began airing an ad on the issue , which the Oz campaign has called “completely false” and “over the top.”

Between 1989 and 2010, he published the results of 75 experiments that involved 1,027 animals. Of those experiments, at least 34 killed about 329 dogs, two killed 31 pigs, and 38 killed 661 rabbits and other rodents, Jezebel reported.

Questions over treatment of animals in research that Oz oversaw at Columbia date back to the early 2000s, when the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals detailed allegations from a whistleblower . The USDA eventually ordered Columbia to pay a $2,000 penalty for violations of the Animal Welfare Act as part of a settlement.

And this isn’t the first time the allegations against Oz, a celebrity doctor, have popped up on the campaign trail. In September, Billy Penn published an investigation into Oz’s time at Columbia, as well as the fallout over the experiments.

An Oz spokesperson called the Jezebel story “preposterous,” and said Oz was not present during the research and “does not condone the mistreatment of animals.”

Here is what you need to know about the allegations and Oz’s role in the research:

What happened at Columbia?

Oz oversaw studies involving animals that focused on cardiac functions , ailments, and surgical procedures.

Whistleblower Catherine Dell’Orto, a postdoctoral veterinary fellow at the school, went public in the early 2000s about research at the university, saying that it inflicted needless suffering on research animals. PETA detailed some of the allegations in letters to the USDA and Columbia in 2003 and 2004 , saying experiments by Oz and other researchers included “serious violations” of the Animal Welfare Act.

In one letter from 2003, then-director of PETA’s research and investigations department Mary Beth Sweetland detailed an incident in which “a litter of fully conscious puppies was placed in a plastic bag and killed” with an expired euthanasia drug.

“The puppies cried out as they received the IC injection because it is, of course, very painful and should not be done without first anesthetizing animals,” Sweetland wrote.

Oz’s name, however, did not appear in PETA’s letters until 2004, when Columbia and the USDA agreed to a $2,000 settlement in connection with animal abuse allegations. That settlement came following an internal investigation by Columbia.

The settlement agreement detailed a number of findings, two dealing with dogs. In one, “pups whelped from a dog being used in a research study were euthanized with outdated euthanasia solution” and “were not properly sedated at the time.” Another finding notes that a “dog exercise plan does not provide evidence that plan is approved by the attending veterinarian.” Other findings deal with primate enclosures, facility conditions, and procedures for evaluating pain and discomfort in animals.

Did Oz kill any dogs himself?

After the allegations began spreading online last month, at least one viral tweet indicated that Oz “pumped injections into puppies hearts without sedation.” However, The Inquirer was unable to find documentation from the time of the experiments that Oz himself euthanized any of the dogs.

Dell’Orto corroborated as much in an interview with Billy Penn , saying that “it wasn’t him that did the euthanasia of the puppies.” Billy Penn also noted that administering euthanasia is “rarely, if ever, left to department leaders or directors.”

What responsibility does Oz have?

Despite the lack of evidence that Oz personally mistreated dogs, animal rights activists still believe he bears responsibility.

As principal investigator, Oz was tasked with undertaking “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of his studies, according to the school’s animal research handbook . But an Oz campaign spokesperson told The Inquirer that Oz was not alerted to any issues “until after the cases were finished,” and was not present for operations or treatments on animals.

“It does not appear that anyone from [Columbia’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee] actually bothered to inspect the dogs used in Oz’s experiments despite the invasiveness of the experiments and the strong potential for suffering,” Sweetland wrote in a 2004 letter to the USDA . She added that the USDA ought to “require that Columbia University suspend all further use of animals by Dr. Mehmet Oz.”

Dell’Orto echoed a similar sentiment to Billy Penn , saying that “when your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there’s a problem.”

Dell’Orto, Sweetland’s letter says, took her concerns to then-head veterinarian Sulli Popilskis, who allegedly told her: “You still don’t understand do you? It’s all political.”

Popilskis, meanwhile, reportedly told Billy Penn last month that PETA isn’t a reliable source.

What’s going on with the super PAC ad?

Senate Majority PAC began running a 30-second ad across Pennsylvania focusing on the issue. Since it first aired Oct. 11, the ad has aired hundreds of times, Politico reports.

The Oz campaign released a statement saying the SMP was “forced to remove” the ad, calling it “completely false, over the top, [and] preposterous.” Politifact rated the ad “half true” on its Truth-O-Meter, saying that its claims were only partially true, and its focus on a particular dog’s alleged “unimaginable pain and suffering” was misleading.

“Over the last few days, we were informed by both Comcast and broadcast stations across Pennsylvania that the Senate Majority PAC is no longer running their ridiculous lies about Doctor Oz’s medical work,” Oz spokesperson Brittany Yanick said in a statement.

SMP, however, told Politico that they will be airing an “encore round” of ads about the issue. The group’s spokesperson, Veronica Yoo, said in a statement that suggesting the ads were removed “against our intent is categorically false.”

What are the candidates saying?

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate, seized on the controversy, tweeting that “some sick people like Dr. Oz get their jollies by harming animals,” and called Oz “a puppy killer.” Fetterman also shared a photo with his rescue dogs Levi and Artie , writing that he would be “hugging them extra tight tonight.”

The Fetterman campaign also called Oz “a puppy killer” in a press release. Fetterman’s wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, called the Jezebel article “a truly heartbreaking report.”

Oz’s campaign denied the allegations in a statement to The Inquirer, and accused Fetterman of using the viral story to distract from other issues.

“While Dr. Oz was busy operating on human lives, researchers and veterinarians were in the Columbia University research labs finding new approaches to treat patients with atrial fibrillation which impacts millions of Americans — including John Fetterman,” said Yanick. “Dr. Oz was not in the operating room when the operations were done, he wasn’t present during the post op treatments, no one alerted him of the problem until after the cases were finished and he does not condone the mistreatment of animals.”

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Dr Oz’s medical experiments killed over 300 dogs, including entire litter of puppies

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Dr Mehmet Oz's medical experiments at Columbia University killed hundreds of dogs, including an entire litter of puppies, documents and reports show

Celebrity doctor and Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dr Oz’s medical experiments killed thousands of animals, including over 300 dogs and an entire litter of puppies, a report found.

Dr Mehmet Oz, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon, has been criticized for years for promoting faulty ‘miracle cures,’ pseudoscience, and alternative medicine on his Oprah Winfrey produced daytime talk show.

But long before his television show first aired in 2009, Oz conducted animal experiments for years at his post at Columbia University’s medical school, a whistleblower alleged in 2003 and 2004.

Catherine Dell’Orto, a veterinarian on staff at Columbia, first blew the whistle in 2002 due to another researcher’s treatment of baboons.

Oz, who was head of Columbia Presbyterian’s Cardiovascular Institute at the time, came under fire later for several studies he published in which he attempted to model human cardiac failure with animals.

After reviewing 75 studies published by Oz while he was at Columbia Presbyterian, Jezebel reported that the doctor experimented on 1,027 live animals. Those experiments resulted in the death of 329 dogs, 31 pigs, and 661 rabbits and rodents.

‘There was no [humane] endpoint, major, multiple survival surgeries for these dogs. They suffered quite a bit prior to death, and a lot of them were just found dead in the cages,’ Dell’Orto told Billy Penn in September.

Dell’Orto complained to Columbia’s head veterinarian, and asked to euthanize the animals Oz was using due to their miserable conditions. The head veterinarian declined, and allegedly told Dell’Orto that ‘it’s all political.’

Dell’Orto took that to mean that Oz, who was becoming a celebrity after being featured on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ and Discovery Health Network, was allowed to do whatever he wished.

After getting nowhere, Dell’Orto contacted PETA about the abuse. The animal rights organization started a campaign to bring attention to the animal experimentation

PETA compiled documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act searches, as well as documentation provided by Dell’Orto. These were posted on a website called ColumbiaCruelty.com , which has been archived by the Wayback Machine.

The website identified Oz as a member of ‘Columbia’s Death Squad’ of doctors conducting unethical experiments on animals, and provides detailed, day-by-day accounts of three dogs succumbing to painful deaths after Oz opened their chests to perform radio frequency ablation procedures.

In one of the more sensational claims, PETA alleged that an entire litter of puppies was killed by injections into their hearts without prior sedation.

‘The screams of these puppies could be heard through closed doors,’ PETA said in a letter addressed to Columbia Chancellor Lee Bollinger. ‘All of these puppies, lying in a plastic garbage bag, were killed in the presence of their littermates.’

The experiments were eventually found to have violated the Animal Welfare Act, costing the university a $2,000 fine in 2004.

PETA and Dell’Orto say that the investigation, which was conducted internally and signed off by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), was faulty and didn’t highlight the worst abuses from Oz’s experimentation.

The USDA report still details how puppies in the study were inhumanely euthanized by researchers: ‘Pups whelped from a dog being used in a research study were euthanized with outdated euthanasia solution; drug use logs indicate the pups were not properly sedated at the time as claimed by person administering euthanasia.’

The report also said animal cages and an incubator were dirty and rusty, and that there was no evidence a veterinarian signed off on an exercise plan for the dogs.

Columbia has not publicly commented on the allegations since the initial internal investigation in 2004. Earlier this year, the Daily Beast reported that Columbia appears to have cut ties with the celebrity doctor, removing him from faculty pages and changing his title to ‘professor emeritus.’

Oz is currently running for Pennsylvania’s open senate seat as the GOP’s nominee. He is trailing in the polls behind current PA Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman.

Fetterman called Oz a ‘puppy killer’ on Twitter shortly after the Jezebel report was released yesterday. He followed that up with a photo of him hugging his two dogs, Artie and Levi .

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected] .

For more stories like this, check our news page .

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'Extensive suffering': Whistleblower fact-checks reports of Mehmet Oz's experiments killing animals

Over the course of two decades Mehmet Oz, the “celebrity doctor” known as “ Dr. Oz ,” now the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s nominee for a U.S. Senate seat, was the “principle investigator” at a Columbia University research laboratory with “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of his studies.

According to the website Jezebel , “a review of 75 studies published by Mehmet Oz between 1989 and 2010 reveals the Republican Senate candidate’s research killed over 300 dogs and inflicted significant suffering on them and the other animals used in experiments.”

It was far more than 300 dogs, too, according to Jezebel.

“Over the course of 75 studies published in academic journals reviewed by Jezebel, Oz’s team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and small rodents. Thirty-four of these experiments resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs, while two of his experiments killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments killed 661 rabbits and rodents,” Jezebel reported.

READ MORE: Dr. Oz Trounced in Newsmax Interview as Host Demands Explanation for ‘Wegner’s’ and ‘Crudité’ Ad

A whistleblower, veterinarian Catherine Dell’Orto provided testimony “about Oz’s research” and “detailed extensive suffering inflicted on his team’s canine test subjects, including multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which sets minimum standards of care for dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, and other animals in the possession of animal dealers and laboratories. The law specifically requires researchers and breeders to use pain-relieving drugs or euthanasia on the animals, and not use paralytics without anesthesia, or experiment multiple times on the same animal.”

Jezebel also reports “Dell’Orto testified that a dog experimented on by Oz’s team experienced lethargy, vomiting, paralysis, and kidney failure, but wasn’t euthanized for a full two days.”

“She alleged other truly horrifying examples of gratuitously cruel treatment of dogs, including at least one dog who was kept alive for a month for continued experimentation despite her unstable, painful condition, despite how data from her continued experimentation was deemed unusable. According to Dell’Orto, one Oz-led study resulted in a litter of puppies being killed by intracardiac injection with syringes of expired drugs inserted in their hearts without any sedation. Upon being killed, the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates.”

READ MORE: Watch: Herschel Walker Says if Georgia Voters Don’t Elect Him They Won’t Even ‘Have a Chance to Be Redeemed’

That particular detail was so shocking U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), commented, “WTF.”

“Dell’Orto also noted that while Oz wasn’t the one who euthanized the dogs and puppies himself, ‘When your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there’s a problem.'”

Oz’s Democratic opponent, Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman summed up the allegations, tweeting, “ Dr. Oz is a puppy killer .”

PEOPLE magazine followed up with Dell’Orto to fact check the Jezebel report.

It did not get any better for Dr. Oz.

“Dell’Orto tells PEOPLE she witnessed the inhumane treatment of dogs in lab experiments investigating aspects of heart function over which Oz served in the role of ‘principal investigator’ — including leaving dogs in pain and paralyzed for weeks, with no discernible research benefit, before they were euthanized or died,” People reports.

While others in the same role as Oz involved themselves personally in experiments to “ensure minimal suffering,” People reports, Dell’Orto says with Dr. Oz, “What I saw was abuse.”

“‘The puppies killed in the bag were killed by a vet tech,’ not by Oz, Dell’Orto tells PEOPLE.”

In another experiment one dog “was kept alive for 29 days post-operatively despite being paralyzed and with no clear research benefit, says Dell’Orto.”

“Horrible things that went on,” Dell’Orto said.

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Oz campaign fires back in controversy over animal abuse allegations

Updated: Oct. 05, 2022, 9:26 a.m.
| Published: Oct. 04, 2022, 5:07 p.m.

Dr. Mehmet Oz and Attorney General Josh Shapiro conversations at PA Chamber Dinner

The Oz campaign has declined to weigh in on the latest controversy surrounding U.S. Senatorial candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz's campaign - that of animal abuse allegations. Vicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLive Vicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLive

Ivey DeJesus | [email protected]

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated at 8 p.m. Oct. 4, 2022 to include a response from the Oz campaign.

Mehmet Oz’s campaign on Tuesday blamed opponent John Fetterman late Tuesday for promoting a viral news story tying Oz to allegations of mistreatment of animals used in medical research, while defending the research Oz oversaw at Columbia University.

Reports by Billy Penn and Jezebel linked Oz to a 20-year-old claim of animal mistreatment at Columbia University that led to the deaths of hundreds of dogs.

Oz campaign spokeswoman Brittany Yanick called the Jezebel story “totally false and preposterous,” being pushed by Fetterman, who accused Oz of being a “puppy killer” in a Tweet, to “distract voters from issues that really matter.”

According to the two news reports, Oz in 2002 was the director of a research program at Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine at the center of claims of animal mistreatment in medical research.

In particular, researchers were found to have broken from protocol in improperly administering an injectable euthanasia agent to lab dogs. Jezebel, which reviewed 75 studies published by Oz between 1989 and 2010, found that his research team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and small rodents.

Thirty-four of these experiments resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs, while two of his experiments killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments killed 661 rabbits and rodents.

Billy Penn, which also reviewed the documents, found no evidence that Oz himself had harmed any of the animals.

“Doctor Oz never abused any animals, and suggesting otherwise is ridiculous,” said Yannick.

She defended the research conducted under the supervision of Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and said he was not present during any procedures, nor was he aware of any issues involving the treatment of lab animals.

“While Dr. Oz was busy operating on human lives, researchers and veterinarians were in the Columbia University research labs finding new approaches to treat patients with atrial fibrillation which impacts millions of Americans - including John Fetterman,” Yannick said. “Dr. Oz was not in the operating room when the operations were done, he wasn’t present during the post-op treatments, no one alerted him of the problem until after the cases were finished and he does not condone the mistreatment of animals.”

Billy Penn spoke with the researcher who in 2002 blew the whistle on the treatment of animals in the studies.

Catherine Dell’Orto, then a postdoctoral veterinary fellow at Columbia, told Billy Penn that Oz was not implicated in the actual mistreatment of the animals.

“It wasn’t him that did the euthanasia of the puppies,” she told Billy Penn.

Dell’Orto acknowledged to Billy Penn that research directors rarely administer euthanasia, but she still felt Oz had some culpability.

“When your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there’s a problem,” she told Billy Penn.

Oz at the time agreed to settle animal abuse claims with the USDA, according to Billy Penn. Dell’Orto told the news outlet she thought the settlement amount of $2,000 was too small. Dell’Orto waged a public campaign against the research program with the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

In December 2004, Columbia defended Oz, calling him “a highly respected researcher and clinician” who adhered “to the highest standards of animal care,” according to the report.

Columbia did not deny any of the specific allegations Dell’Orto had made against Oz.

The news site Jezebel reached out to Columbia, but the university declined to comment.

In his bid for the Senate, Oz, a heart surgeon-turned-daytime television superstar, has had to battle more than a few controversies - from his extensive collection of properties, his thin ties to Pennsylvania and his penchant for crudites.

The Washington Post this week published a report looking at Oz’s endorsement as a TV personality doctor of a slew of sham products.

Oz on Monday night appeared at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry’s fall dinner.

He vowed to govern from the middle.

“I don’t have a lot of big fights with folks in other belief systems or other political parties. I know that all of us together are smarter than any one of us,” Oz said. “But I am going to fight for what I think is important so that it is reflected (in the solution), and so that you can do the same. And if we don’t do that we abdicate control over our future.”

Oz is running against Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, who leads in the race by 6 points, according to a new poll.

A USA Today-Suffolk University poll released Tuesday showed Fetterman with 46 percent support to Oz’s 40 percent.

A Cleveland-born son of Turkish immigrants, Oz earned medical and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

For more on candidates, campaigns and voters, subscribe to our weekly Elections 2022 newsletter at www.pennlive.com/newsletterslerts and to our daily text alerts.

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Mehmet Oz’s Senate campaign makes a stop in Hershey, and it’s like daytime TV at night

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Dr Oz refuses to comment on report his research killed more than 300 dogs as Fetterman calls him ‘puppy killer’

The senate hopeful was allegedly part of columbia university experiments that killed hundreds of dogs and rabbits and dozens of pigs, article bookmarked.

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Dr Mehmet Oz , a Donald Trump -endorsed candidate running for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, is facing resurfaced allegations that he was a "principal investigator" on experiments that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 dogs , including an entire litter of puppies. And, perplexingly, he doesn’t seem to want to refute these allegations or comment on them in any way.

Earlier this week, Jezebel reviewed 75 studies published in academic journals involving Dr Oz's teams at Columbia University and found Dr Oz's team had conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animals. Of these experiments, 34 resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs, two killed 31 pigs, and 38 killed 661 rabbits and rodents.

While it is both legal and not uncommon for animals to be used in scientific experimentation, there are guidelines for their treatment laid out in the Animal Welfare Act. Under the AWA , minimum standards are established for the treatment of lab animals, requiring researchers and breeders to employ pain-relief drugs or euthanasia on the animals during experimentation. It also prohibits the use of paralytics without anesthesia and researchers from experimenting on the same animal multiple times.

Prior to Jezebel ’s explosive report, a veterinarian blew the whistle on Dr Oz's research in the early 2000's. Catherin Dell’Orto, a researcher, claimed the team's canine tests resulted in excessive suffering for the animals and violated the AWA. She alleged that a dog experimented on by Dr Oz's team was vomiting, lethargic, experienced paralysis and kidney failure, but was allowed to suffer for 48 hours before it was euthanised.

Ms Dell'Orto also claimed a dog had been experimented on multiple times and was kept alive for a month despite being in pain. In another example, the veterinarian claimed a litter of puppies was killed when an intercardiac injection of expired drugs was shot directly into their hearts without sedation. The dead dogs were then allegedly left in a garbage bag with other live dogs that lived with them in the litter before the experiment.

Ms Dell'Orto detailed her allegations to PETA, an animal rights activisit organisation, who then sent a letter to Columbia University and to the US Department of Agriculture. She spoke with Billy Penn last month and confirmed that the contents of PETA's letter was accurate to what she told the organisation.

In the wake of such claims resurfacing, Dr Oz has not publicly commented or responded to requests for comment. The Independent reached out to Dr Oz for comment and did not hear back.

Notably, Columbia University was ultimately fined $2,000 by the USDA in 2004 for violating the Animal Welfare Act; a result from a settlement between the university and the USDA based on its findings after reviewing Dr Oz's research.

Later that same year, Jezebel ’s reporting notes, the university defended Dr Oz as a "highly respected researcher and clinician" and claimed his actions were congruent "to the highest standards of animal care." However, the university did not directly deny any of the specific claims laid out by Ms Dell'Orto.

The university has since apparently severed ties with Dr Oz and stripped his name from its site, according to reporting earlier this year by The Daily Beast . He previously held senior positions at the university.

The Independent has contacted Columbia University for comment.

While both Dr Oz and Columbia University have remained quiet on these allegations, the claims have not been ignored by Dr Oz’s campaign opponent, Democrat John Fetterman.

Mr Fetterman has been vocal on Twitter, sharing the Jezebel report and outright calling Dr Oz “a puppy killer” in one tweet. In another tweet, Mr Fetterman posted a photo of himself with his two dogs along with another message slamming Dr Oz’s experiments: “I LOVE my dogs Apparently some sick people like Dr. Oz get their jollies by harming animals... We have a close race here in PA and I could use your help to keep the #PuppyKiller out of the US Senate.”

Further, Mr Fetterman is selling a sticker that includes a photo of a dog along with the words "Dog Lovers for Fetterman." In a tweet, he told followers to “buy our latest sticker + help keep #PuppyKiller Dr Oz out of the US Senate," the tweet said, along with a link to a merch shop.

Mr Fetterman’s wife, Gisele Barreto, warned voters in Jezebel last month about Dr Oz and said his past should concern voters.

“I think if you look at a profile of someone who makes misogynistic comments, who abuses animals, who does all these things, you’re getting a picture of someone who’s a pretty dangerous person,” she said. “That’s certainly not someone I would want making decisions on my rights or any other women’s and folks’ rights in the state, deciding whether doctors go to jail for performing life-saving services.”

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'HORRIBLE THINGS'

‘what i saw was abuse’: allegations of dr. oz’s experiments killing hundreds of animals fact-checked by whistleblower.

It was far more than 300 dogs, too, according to Jezebel.

READ MORE: Dr. Oz Trounced in Newsmax Interview as Host Demands Explanation for ‘Wegner’s’ and ‘Crudité’ Ad

Jezebel also reports “Dell’Orto testified that a dog experimented on by Oz’s team experienced lethargy, vomiting, paralysis, and kidney failure, but wasn’t euthanized for a full two days.”

READ MORE: Watch: Herschel Walker Says if Georgia Voters Don’t Elect Him They Won’t Even ‘Have a Chance to Be Redeemed’

That particular detail was so shocking U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), commented, “WTF.”

“Upon being killed, the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates.” WTF… https://t.co/nyQ4Bjr8Bq — Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 3, 2022

Oz’s Democratic opponent, Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman summed up the allegations, tweeting, “ Dr. Oz is a puppy killer .”

PEOPLE magazine followed up with Dell’Orto to fact check the Jezebel report.

It did not get any better for Dr. Oz.

While others in the same role as Oz involved themselves personally in experiments to “ensure minimal suffering,” People reports, Dell’Orto says with Dr. Oz, “What I saw was abuse.”

“‘The puppies killed in the bag were killed by a vet tech,’ not by Oz, Dell’Orto tells PEOPLE.”

In another experiment one dog “was kept alive for 29 days post-operatively despite being paralyzed and with no clear research benefit, says Dell’Orto.”

“Horrible things that went on,” Dell’Orto said.

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Dr. Oz conducted experiments that killed over 300 dogs and hundreds of other animals: report

"this is who dr. oz is: unconscionable and a danger to others," said gisele barreto fetterman, by julia conley.

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams . It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Hours after pointing to extensive evidence that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz has misled millions of people about dangerous and ineffective so-called "miracle" cures and supplements, Democratic candidate John Fetterman's campaign on Monday urged Pennsylvania voters to consider another factor in Oz's pre-politics career: His time leading scientific research that led to the deaths of more than 300 dogs and hundreds of other animals.

"We know what the stakes are in this election," tweeted Fetterman's wife, activist Gisele Barreto Ferrerman. "Add one more: PUPPIES. Puppies are on the line."

Jezebel on Monday reported that its review of 75 studies published by Oz between 1989 and 2010, when he was principal investigator at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine, revealed that 329 dogs died as a result of 34 of his experiments.

More than 660 rabbits and rodents and more than 30 pigs were also killed as a result of dozens of the cardiothoracic surgeon and TV host's experiments.

Methods used by the lab—where Oz took "full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct" of the studies he led—violated the Animal Welfare Act, according to testimony given in 2005 by Catherine Dell'Orto, a veterinarian who worked there.

According to Dell'Orto, dogs who were experiencing painful medical conditions including vomiting, paralysis, and kidney failure were kept alive for days and even weeks so Oz's team could experiment on them. The Republican candidate also led an experiment in which the team injected expired drugs into the hearts of a litter of puppies without using sedation, killing them.

"Upon being killed, the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates," reported Jezebel.

According to the website, "Columbia declined to comment" on the report, "and Oz's campaign has yet to respond" to a request for comment.

After the report was published, Fetterman tweeted a succinct message: "Dr. Oz is a puppy killer."

"This is a truly heartbreaking report," said Barreto Fetterman. "What kind of person, let alone doctor, would do something like this? The same person who made his career and fortune off of peddling fake—and sometimes harmful—miracle pills. The same person who knowingly pushed dangerous diets to his audience."

"This is who Dr. Oz is: unconscionable and a danger to others," she added.

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Dr. Oz Accused of Killing Hundreds of Dogs, Puppies, Bunnies

Live animal experiments led by dr. oz allegedly led to the — often inhumane — deaths of 329 dogs and puppies, 31 pigs, and 661 rabbits and rodents..

Television doctor and Pennsylvania senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz is many things. He's an alleged vegetable elitist , an Oprah cast-out , and, um, a pretty bad doctor , at least according to other physicians. Now, in the heat of the campaign, you can add "alleged mass animal murderer" to that list.

Yes, seriously. A report from Jezebel just revealed that back in the early 2000s, an internal Columbia University investigation concluded that over the course of 75 university studies for which Oz was "principal investigator," the television personality and his team conducted experiments on 1,027 live animal subjects including dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and small rodents. This research, all published between 1989 and 2010, led to the deaths of 329 dogs and puppies, 31 pigs, and 661 rabbits and rodents

Animal experimentation, for better or worse, is an established part of scientific research. But even by those standards, Oz is accused of violating norms. A number of the experiments were allegedly in direct violation of the Animal Welfare Act, inflicting extensive — and illegal — suffering on many of these living creatures. And in all of these studies Oz, currently running for public office, had "full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct."

Per the report, the allegations were initially made in 2003 and 2004 by a whistleblower named Catherine Dell'Orto. Her testimonies are harrowing — in one instance, Dell'Orto claimed that a dog was kept alive for a month for continued live experimentation despite, as Jezebel writes, being in an "unstable, painful" condition.

Another horrifying claim alleged that several puppies, which were given no anesthesia, were killed via intracardiac injections of expired drugs; those dead puppies were then allegedly left in a garbage bag with their living littermates. (These allegations and many, many more are detailed in two letters, sent in 2003 and 2004, from PETA to Columbia; Dell'Orto now concedes that PETA isn't a reliable source , but stands behind the allegations they relayed on her behalf)

Those accusations would be in violation of animal rights under American law. After the internal investigation, Columbia was ordered by the USDA to pay a $2,000 fine. Dell'Orto, however, maintains that the investigation was faulty, alleging to Jezebel that Columbia "had investigators on the committee that were also complicit in this type of poorly designed, cruel animal experimentation."

At the time, according to Jezebel , Columbia defended Oz as a "a highly respected researcher and clinician who stuck to the "highest standards of animal care," though reportedly refrained from denying any specific allegations. Since then, though, Columbia has severed all ties — back in April, The Daily Beast reported that Columbia had even scrubbed his profile completely from their website.

If this is all true, Columbia's decision to distance themselves from their former faculty probably makes sense.

And ultimately, even if Oz wasn't personally carrying out every painful, illegal act here, he was certainly — as was detailed in the studies — the person in charge. As Dell'Orto herself put it to Jezebel : "when your name is on the experiment, and the way the experiment is designed inflicts such cruelty to these animals, by design, there's a problem."

READ MORE: Dr. Oz's Scientific Experiments Killed Over 300 Dogs, Entire Litter of Puppies [ Jezebel ]

More on Dr. Oz: Audio Surfaces of Dr. Oz Saying Some Incest Is Okay, and Also His Daughters Don't Like How He Smells

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Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at the Newtown Athletic Club on May 11, 2022 in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

'Dr. Oz Is a Puppy Killer': Fetterman Campaign Responds to Reporting on Animal Testing

"this is who dr. oz is: unconscionable and a danger to others," said fetterman's wife, activist gisele barreto fetterman..

"What kind of person, let alone doctor, would do something like this? The same person who made his career and fortune off of peddling fake--and sometimes harmful--miracle pills."

"We know what the stakes are in this election," tweeted Fetterman's wife, activist Gisele Barreto Fetterman. "Add one more: PUPPIES. Puppies are on the line."

More than 660 rabbits and rodents and more than 30 pigs were also killed as a result of dozens of the cardiothoracic surgeon and TV host's experiments.

Methods used by the lab--where Oz took "full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct" of the studies he led--violated the Animal Welfare Act, according to testimony given in 2005 by Catherine Dell'Orto, a veterinarian who worked there.

"Upon being killed, the puppies were allegedly left in a garbage bag with living puppies who were their littermates," reported Jezebel.

According to the website, "Columbia declined to comment" on the report, "and Oz's campaign has yet to respond" to a request for comment.

After the report was published, Fetterman tweeted a succinct message: "Dr. Oz is a puppy killer."

\u201cBREAKING: Dr. Oz is a puppy killer. https://t.co/SXgRSUO2TK\u201d — John Fetterman (@John Fetterman) 1664823565

"This is a truly heartbreaking report," said Barreto Fetterman. "What kind of person, let alone doctor, would do something like this? The same person who made his career and fortune off of peddling fake--and sometimes harmful--miracle pills. The same person who knowingly pushed dangerous diets to his audience."

"This is who Dr. Oz is: unconscionable and a danger to others," she added.

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Dr. Oz's Research Reportedly Killed Over 300 Dogs While at Columbia University

Updated Jan. 26 2023, 11:41 a.m. ET

Between Dr. Oz's questionable health claims , as well as his contentious right-wing political views , the TV personality is a generally controversial figure. But his latest bit of news is bound to make even some of his most diehard fans' blood boil.

Jezebel reviewed several studies the New Jersey resident published over the course of almost 20 years, which revealed that Dr. Oz's team was responsible for killing more than 300 dogs , through research he conducted at Columbia University.

In response to the findings, which were published on Monday, Oct. 3, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, John Fetterman called his Republican opponent "sick."

"I LOVE my dogs," the Democratic politician tweeted . "Apparently some sick people like Dr. Oz get their jollies by harming animals... We have a close race here in PA and I could use your help to keep the #PuppyKiller out of the US Senate."

Newsweek asked Oz's team for comment on the matter. But in a statement released on Tuesday, Oct. 4, the aspiring politician's spokesperson, Barney Keller denied the claims , stating: "Only the idiots at Newsweek believe what they read at Jezebel ."

Why did Dr. Oz reportedly kill more than 300 dogs?

During his time as a politician, Dr. Oz has already been involved in a number of scandals — but this hits home for dog enthusiasts across the nation, even for those in his party. According to Jezebel , 75 studies published between 1989 and 2010 reveal his research k

There, Oz took “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of experiments on 1,027 live animal subjects, such as: dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and rodents. About half of the experiments resulted in 329 dead dogs, two experiments that killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments that killed 661 rabbits and other rodents.

Whistleblower and veterinarian Catherine Dell’Orto testified against Oz in the early 2000s, detailing various violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

Though the law evidently requires the use of pain-relieving drugs, euthanasia, and anesthesia with the use of paralytics, Oz's team reportedly let several dogs suffer for up to a month after experiments. A litter of puppies was also reportedly killed by expired drugs, before they were left in a trash bag with their litter-mates — who were still alive.

At the time, Columbia was required to pay a small $2,000 fine at the time, though it was minute in comparison to the affected animal's suffering.

Is animal testing actually necessary?

It turns out that animal testing isn't even necessary for medical or cosmetic testing — in fact, it may be misleading in terms of medical research.

"Defenders of animal testing often argue that while it may be imperfect, it is our only option for advancing human medicine," Brian Kateman, cofounder and president of the Reducetarian Foundation and professor of environmental science and sustainability, wrote for NBC News after it was revealed that Dr. Oz had killed hundreds of dogs.

"This view neglects how differences in the bodies of species can lead to misleading information — which can be worse than no information," he continues. "In addition, it ignores the reality of alternatives already available that are based on human biology and have the potential to increase research relevance and deliver more reliable risk assessments while maintaining existing safety levels."

Hopefully, the release of this information will make people realize the importance of ending animal testing. And since there are many known alternatives to animal testing that provide more accurate and safe results, it's easy to do so.

This article, originally published on Oct. 4, 2022, has been updated to include more related links.

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Dr. oz led experiments that killed 300 dogs: reports, an entire litter of puppies, along with hundreds bunnies, calves, and other animals were treated inhumanely before dying, reports state..

Justin Heinze , Patch Staff

PENNSYLVANIA — As the weeks have turned to months of the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, the campaigns have grown more crusading, the ombudsmen more outlandish, the criticisms more comical, the social media jabs more juvenile, and the dirt even dirtier.

The latest bizarre bombshell to emerge alleges that Mehmet Oz, the Republican celebrity doctor who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and has increasingly embraced the sort of MAGA populism that has brought his compatriots more fiery support, killed dogs.

A left-leaning website called Jezebel broke the original story in an opinion piece, citing a review of years of studies overseen by Oz at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine.

Find out what's happening in Across Pennsylvania with free, real-time updates from Patch.

Oz was in charge of experiments that killed 329 dogs and 661 rabbits and rodents, including a litter of puppies and bunnies, as well as pigs, calves, and other animals, the report states. Specifically, the study analyzed 75 different studies in academic journals that identified experiments on 1,027 animals, 34 of which led to deaths.

Further, the report alleges that Oz and his team did not take basic pain relieving measures to ensure that the animals did not needlessly suffer. The actions violated animal welfare laws, the report states.

The investigation was inspired by a whistleblower and veterinarian who worked alongside Oz, Catherine Dell’Orto, who had previously provided details to PETA.

Oz's campaign refused comment to numerous outlets. A request for comment from Patch was not immediately returned. An Oz spokesperson reportedly told Newsweek , "Only the idiots at Newsweek believe what they read at Jezebel."

Curiously, Oz himself was quoted by PETA as an animal expert and animal rights advocate for some of their campaigns. On multiple occasions, and as recently as 2010 , PETA quoted Oz and linked to a segment on his old "Dr. Oz Show" exposing the harmful chemicals inside the chicken consumed by many Americans.

Fetterman's campaign, of course, latched on.

"Dr. Oz isn't going to be able to brush his puppy killing ways under the rug," the lieutenant governor said on Twitter. "Those of us who love our dogs won't forget that he did something so sick + cruel."

Oz had drastically turned his campaign around in recent weeks, significantly narrowing the gap with Fetterman amid increasing concern over Fetterman's health and ability to handle the rigors of service in the Senate following a stroke in May. Once up by 10 points, Oz now trails Fetterman by just 3.7 points, according to an aggregate of the most recent polls from RealClearPolitics .

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Dr. Oz’s Biomedical Experiments Resulted in Over 300 Dog Deaths

By jane mundy

Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz, oversaw the deaths of at least 329 dogs during his time as a “principal investigator” at Columbia University.

As initially reported by Jezebel , Oz and his team at the Institute of Comparative Medicine conducted 75 studies between 1989 and 2010, 34 of which resulted in dog deaths. Although conducting biomedical experiments on dogs is not illegal, Oz and his team violated the Animal Welfare Act in their poor treatment of the animals.

Whistleblower Comes Forward

In the early 2000s, whistleblower and veterinarian Catherine Dell’Orto testified that Oz’s treatment violated federal law. She claimed that Oz’s research inflicted extensive suffering on his team’s canine test subjects.

According to Newsday , Dell’Orto previously complained twice to Columbia’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee regarding treatments of baboons used for research. After this fell on deaf ears, she then contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which ensures compliance with the federal Animal Welfare Act. She also told her story both to PETA and The Humane Society of the United States. Dell’Orto testified about one dog in particular who experienced lethargy, vomiting, paralysis, and kidney failure. Still, this dog wasn’t euthanized for a full two days.

Dell’Orto told CBS News that Oz used dogs to model human cardiac failure. He did so by speeding up their heart rates and then applying experimental treatments, including surgery. “[Oz] was the principal investigator on these experiments. … [The dogs] suffered quite a bit prior to death, and a lot of them were just found dead in the cages,” Dell’Orto said.

Columbia’s website notes that a principal investigator “has overall responsibility for safety and compliance in his or her laboratory.” It also notes that many of the lab’s responsibilities can be delegated to “competent designee(s).”

Investigation and Fine

A 2004 letter from PETA urged the USDA to “reopen its investigation into Columbia University and formally charge the university for its failure to humanely treat dogs… used in experiments conducted by Mehmet Oz.”

The letter details Dell’Orto’s damning testimony. It also suggests that the USDA “should require that Columbia University suspend all further use of animals by Dr. Mehmet Oz.”

In the same year, the USDA determined that Oz’s experiments violated the Animal Welfare Act. They required that Columbia pay a $2000 fine. The Daily Beast reported that Columbia has seemingly cut all ties with Oz since his departure, stripping his personal pages from the medical center’s website.

The Controversy of Animal Testing for Biomedical Research

In the 2020 AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals , the American Veterinary Medical Association states that it doesn’t “take the death of nonhuman animals lightly and attempts to provide guidance for its members on both the morality and practical necessity of the intentional killing of animals.”

The AVMA calls euthanasia carried out in biomedical research “a practical necessity” that is “unpleasant and morally challenging.”

The AVMA also states that this euthanasia must “adhere to strict policies, guidelines, and applicable regulations.”

While the AVMA deems biomedical research on animals a necessity, animal rights groups and animal advocates disagree. As a result of this opposition, legislation like the Animal Welfare Act came to be. The law requires researchers and breeders to use pain-relieving drugs or euthanasia on testing animals. Additionally, researchers may not use paralytics without anesthesia nor experiment multiple times on the same animal.

Because of the shift in public opinion, it’s possible that animal testing will soon meet its end.

Tim Walz with his beloved dog, a Labrador Retriever named Scout.

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Virginia legislators studying transparency at publicly funded animal testing facilities

Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

A legislative task force has convened to study transparency deficiencies at publicly funded facilities that conduct animal experiments.

“I felt like it started a conversation,” Sen. Jennifer Boysko , D-Fairfax, said Thursday. “Typically during the legislative session, everything is so compressed and quick. This actually brought the people who have a real stake in (this issue) to the table, and I think we will come out with a reasonable and thoughtful result.”

Boysko is among several legislators who carried bipartisan legislation this year that would have made it easier to obtain information about animal testing at state-funded facilities. Several public universities in Virginia experiment on animals as part of their scientific research, including Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk.

After universities pushed back, arguing it would overburden their institutions, the legislation was amended to form a task force to study the issue. The group includes representatives for universities, animal rights groups and open government advocacy organizations. Four legislators serve on the panel: Boysko, Sen. Bill Stanley and Dels. Shelly Simonds and Hillary Pugh Kent.

Solutions were not explored during the first meeting July 26 in Richmond, but members identified their goals and concerns with the help of professional mediators.

“I would like the access to understand exactly which animals are there,” Boysko said at the meeting. “How many die and what the circumstances are of their death — for transparency’s sake, I think it’s reasonable to request that.”

Simonds, a Newport News Democrat, said she wanted to ensure information about the number and type of animals being used in experiments was easily accessible to the public without red tape.

“I think that barriers to information when it’s a publicly funded university are inappropriate, and I want to make sure that we have the information without having to do constant FOIA requests,” she said.

Raphael Malbrue, an attending veterinarian and director for the Center for Comparative Medicine at the University of Virginia, questioned how knowing the numbers would help improve animal welfare. He added that researchers were often busy working on publications.

“They are doing so much paperwork, to be perfectly honest that prevents them from doing some of those outreach things to really talk to taxpayers about this is where your money is going and this is the new discoveries we have made,” he said.

Josh Cohen, research assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said schools provide oversight for animal research and aren’t trying to hide their work. But he said researchers are wary about releasing information regarding experiments.

“If you haven’t filed an invention disclosure, then you lose your right to that intellectual property,” he said. “I think that is part of the reason why universities and institutions of higher education are cautious about what is put forward.”

Megan Rhyne, executive director for the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, argued public entities don’t get to determine their own transparency policies or decide what would be of value to the public.

“The public gets to decide what they are interested in,” she said. “They get to say I would like to see this information — and the data, the information, is their right to obtain unless a (FOIA) exemption applies.”

The task force will convene again Aug. 30 and Sept. 20. Meetings are open to the public and can be viewed on the website for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The group will issue a report of its findings later this year for the legislature to review.

Legislators have zeroed in on animal testing in recent years after the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a string of warnings and animal welfare citations to several universities, including EVMS and Virginia Tech . Doug Gardner, a spokesperson for EVMS, declined to comment on the task force this week, explaining the school wants to wait until the group has concluded its work.

The university further declined a request by The Virginian-Pilot to tour the institution’s animal-holding facilities.

“To ensure the safety and well-being of the animals in our facility, we do not permit individuals not involved in the care, facilities maintenance, accreditation, inspection, training, and university administration and regulation,” Gardner wrote in an email.

Katie King, [email protected]

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Dr. Oz Conducted Experiments That Killed 329 Dogs and 31 Pigs: Report

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This Old Experiment With Mice Led to Bleak Predictions for Humanity’s Future

From the 1950s to the 1970s, researcher John Calhoun gave rodents unlimited food and studied their behavior in overcrowded conditions

Maris Fessenden ; Updated by Rudy Molinek

What does utopia look like for mice and rats? According to a researcher who did most of his work in the 1950s through 1970s, it might include limitless food, multiple levels and secluded little condos. These were all part of John Calhoun’s experiments to study the effects of population density on behavior. But what looked like rodent paradises at first quickly spiraled into out-of-control overcrowding, eventual population collapse and seemingly sinister behavior patterns.

In other words, the mice were not nice.

Working with rats between 1958 and 1962, and with mice from 1968 to 1972, Calhoun set up experimental rodent enclosures at the National Institute of Mental Health’s Laboratory of Psychology. He hoped to learn more about how humans might behave in a crowded future. His first 24 attempts ended early due to constraints on laboratory space. But his 25th attempt at a utopian habitat, which began in 1968, would become a landmark psychological study. According to Gizmodo ’s Esther Inglis-Arkell, Calhoun’s “Universe 25” started when the researcher dropped four female and four male mice into the enclosure.

By the 560th day, the population peaked with over 2,200 individuals scurrying around, waiting for food and sometimes erupting into open brawls. These mice spent most of their time in the presence of hundreds of other mice. When they became adults, those mice that managed to produce offspring were so stressed out that parenting became an afterthought.

“Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies,” wrote Inglis-Arkell in 2015. “They’d move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it.”

A select group of mice, which Calhoun called “the beautiful ones,” secluded themselves in protected places with a guard posted at the entry. They didn’t seek out mates or fight with other mice, wrote Will Wiles in Cabinet magazine in 2011, “they just ate, slept and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection.”

Eventually, several factors combined to doom the experiment. The beautiful ones’ chaste behavior lowered the birth rate. Meanwhile, out in the overcrowded common areas, the few remaining parents’ neglect increased infant mortality. These factors sent the mice society over a demographic cliff. Just over a month after population peaked, around day 600, according to Distillations magazine ’s Sam Kean, no baby mice were surviving more than a few days. The society plummeted toward extinction as the remaining adult mice were just “hiding like hermits or grooming all day” before dying out, writes Kean.

Calhoun launched his experiments with the intent of translating his findings to human behavior. Ideas of a dangerously overcrowded human population were popularized by Thomas Malthus at the end of the 18th century with his book An Essay on the Principle of Population . Malthus theorized that populations would expand far faster than food production, leading to poverty and societal decline. Then, in 1968, the same year Calhoun set his ill-fated utopia in motion, Stanford University entomologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb . The book sparked widespread fears of an overcrowded and dystopic imminent future, beginning with the line, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.”

Ehrlich suggested that the impending collapse mirrored the conditions Calhoun would find in his experiments. The cause, wrote Charles C. Mann for Smithsonian magazine in 2018, would be “too many people, packed into too-tight spaces, taking too much from the earth. Unless humanity cut down its numbers—soon—all of us would face ‘mass starvation’ on ‘a dying planet.’”

Calhoun’s experiments were interpreted at the time as evidence of what could happen in an overpopulated world. The unusual behaviors he observed—such as open violence, a lack of interest in sex and poor pup-rearing—he dubbed “behavioral sinks.”

After Calhoun wrote about his findings in a 1962 issue of Scientific American , that term caught on in popular culture, according to a paper published in the Journal of Social History . The work tapped into the era’s feeling of dread that crowded urban areas heralded the risk of moral decay.

Events like the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964—in which false reports claimed 37 witnesses stood by and did nothing as Genovese was stabbed repeatedly—only served to intensify the worry. Despite the misinformation, media discussed the case widely as emblematic of rampant urban moral decay. A host of science fiction works—films like Soylent Green , comics like 2000 AD —played on Calhoun’s ideas and those of his contemporaries . For example, Soylent Green ’s vision of a dystopic future was set in a world maligned by pollution, poverty and overpopulation.

Now, interpretations of Calhoun’s work have changed. Inglis-Arkell explains that the main problem of the habitats he created wasn’t really a lack of space. Rather, it seems likely that Universe 25’s design enabled aggressive mice to stake out prime territory and guard the pens for a limited number of mice, leading to overcrowding in the rest of the world.

However we interpret Calhoun’s experiments, though, we can take comfort in the fact that humans are not rodents. Follow-up experiments by other researchers, which looked at human subjects, found that crowded conditions didn’t necessarily lead to negative outcomes like stress, aggression or discomfort.

“Rats may suffer from crowding,” medical historian Edmund Ramsden told the NIH Record ’s Carla Garnett in 2008, “human beings can cope.”

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Maris Fessenden | | READ MORE

Maris Fessenden is a freelance science writer and artist who appreciates small things and wide open spaces.

Rudy Molinek | READ MORE

Rudy Molinek is Smithsonian magazine's 2024 AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

IMAGES

Dr. Oz's Science Experiments Killed 1,000+ Animals
Dr. Oz Puppygate Scandal Explained: Did Dr. Oz Kill Puppies?
Dr. Oz Role in Animal Experiments That Killed Over 300 Dogs and
Photo Reveals a Horrific Day in the Life of a Lab Beagle
Dr. Oz's Scientific Experiments Killed Over 300 Dogs
(PDF) Wizard of Oz experiments

COMMENTS

Fact Check: Was Dr. Oz Responsible for Cruelly Experimenting on Dogs?
Dr. Mehmet Oz — the TV personality turned Pennsylvania Republican candidate for U.S. Senate — is once again making headlines, this time for resurfaced claims that he experimented on dogs while ...
Dr. Oz's experiments killing hundreds of dogs shed light on a terrible
After the Senate passed a bill that would eliminate a federal mandate to conduct animal testing, details about Oz's experiments showed how the bill wouldn't go far enough. IE 11 is not supported.
Fact-checking Democrats' claim about dog deaths in Mehmet Oz's heart
A dog endured "unimaginable pain and suffering" during heart research experiments, "just one of 300 killed in (Dr. Mehmet) Oz's lab.". Dr. Mehmet Oz, the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S ...
Oz's medical research using animals comes under scrutiny in key ...
In 2004, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals alleged that Oz was "responsible for the extreme suffering endured by dogs used in his heart experiments," citing whistleblower testimony ...
The facts about the animal abuse allegations surrounding Senate
Mehmet Oz was investigated & fined for his sick & abusive experiments on dogs. Among his violations, he pumped injections into puppies hearts without sedation. People noted the puppies screams ...
Investigation finds research led by Penn graduate Dr. Oz to have killed
Dogs, pigs, and calves were among the "at least 1,027 live animal subjects." In addition to the 329 dogs, 31 pigs and 661 rabbits and rodents were killed. Oz is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon and was once the vice chair of Columbia's Department of Surgery, although the university appeared to cut ties with him in January.
Dr. Oz Conducted Experiments That Killed 329 Dogs and 31 Pigs: Report
The outlet surveyed 75 of Oz's studies published between 1989 and 2010, also finding that 31 pigs were killed in two other experiments, while 661 rabbits and rodents were killed in 38 more studies.
Mehmet Oz accused of animal abuse linked to his medical research. What
Questions over treatment of animals in research that Oz oversaw at Columbia date back to the early 2000s. But there's no evidence that the Senate candidate personally mistreated any animals. ... PETA detailed some of the allegations in letters to the USDA and Columbia in 2003 and 2004, saying experiments by Oz and other researchers included ...
Dr Oz's medical experiments killed over 300 dogs, including ...
Celebrity doctor and Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dr Oz's medical experiments killed thousands of animals, including over 300 dogs and an entire litter of puppies, a report found. Dr ...
'Extensive suffering': Whistleblower fact-checks reports of Mehmet Oz's
"Over the course of 75 studies published in academic journals reviewed by Jezebel, Oz's team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves ...
Oz campaign fires back in controversy over animal abuse allegations
Jezebel, which reviewed 75 studies published by Oz between 1989 and 2010, found that his research team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves ...
New ads attack Mehmet Oz for animal abuse
An investigation by Jezebel published earlier this month found that Oz's team at Columbia conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects, including 34 experiments which resulted in ...
Dr Oz refuses to comment on report his research killed more than 300
Dr Mehmet Oz, a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate running for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, is facing resurfaced allegations that he was a "principal investigator" on experiments that ...
'What I Saw Was Abuse': Allegations of Dr. Oz's Experiments Killing
A whistleblower, veterinarian Catherine Dell'Orto provided testimony "about Oz's research" and "detailed extensive suffering inflicted on his team's canine test subjects, including multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which sets minimum standards of care for dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, and other animals in the possession of animal dealers and laboratories.
Dr. Oz conducted experiments that killed over 300 dogs and hundreds of
Methods used by the lab—where Oz took "full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct" of the studies he led—violated the Animal Welfare Act, according to testimony ...
Dr. Oz Accused of Killing Hundreds of Dogs, Puppies, Bunnies
Live animal experiments led by Dr. Oz allegedly led to the — often inhumane — deaths of 329 dogs and puppies, 31 pigs, and 661 rabbits and rodents. 10.4.22, 11:48 AM EDT / Maggie Harrison Dupré
'Dr. Oz Is a Puppy Killer': Fetterman Campaign Responds to Reporting on
Hours after pointing to extensive evidence that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz has misled millions of people about dangerous and ineffective so-called "miracle" cures and supplements, Democratic candidate John Fetterman's campaign on Monday urged Pennsylvania voters to consider another factor in Oz's pre-politics career: His time leading scientific research that led to the ...
Dr. Oz's Research Allegedly Killed Over 300 Dogs ...
There, Oz took "full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct" of experiments on 1,027 live animal subjects, such as: dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and rodents. About half of the experiments resulted in 329 dead dogs, two experiments that killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments that killed 661 rabbits and other rodents.
Dr. Oz Led Experiments That Killed 300 Dogs: Reports
Oz was in charge of experiments that killed 329 dogs and 661 rabbits and rodents, including a litter of puppies and bunnies, as well as pigs, calves, and other animals, the report states ...
Dr. Oz's Biomedical Experiments Resulted in Over 300 Dog Deaths
Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz, oversaw the deaths of at least 329 dogs during his time as a "principal investigator" at Columbia University. As initially reported by Jezebel, Oz and his team at ...
It's a dog fight: The battle over ads targeting Oz regarding animal
elections. It's a dog fight: The battle over ads targeting Oz regarding animal abuse The ads, funded by top Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, depict dogs in various forms of distress.
Oz facing animal abuse accusations
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, is facing animal abuse accusations following a report that dozens of his medical experiments at Columbia University resulted ...
Virginia legislators studying transparency at publicly-funded animal
A legislative task force has convened to study transparency deficiencies at publicly funded facilities that conduct animal experiments. "I felt like it started a conversation," Sen. Jennifer ...
Dr. Oz Conducted Experiments That Killed 329 Dogs and 31 Pigs ...
In real science, proposed animal experiments have to be evaluated for humane treatment, and this applies to any experiment involving vertebrates. So for example if fish organs are being harvested, the fish must be humanely sacrificed using acceptable protocols to avoid pain. ... Mehmet Oz willingly killing animals, yeah, the GOP only puts ...
This Old Experiment With Mice Led to Bleak ...
Follow-up experiments by other researchers, which looked at human subjects, found that crowded conditions didn't necessarily lead to negative outcomes like stress, aggression or discomfort.