'Laverne & Shirley' Star Fights to Shut Down Wayne State Research on Dogs

Penny Marshall is using her star power to try to convince Wayne State University to end invasive cardiovascular research trials in dogs. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

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Actress and director Penny Marshall is appealing to Wayne State University to immediately halt cardiology research trials that result in the death of dogs, including one named Laverne that shares the name of her character on the popular 1970s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley.”

In a letter to university President M. Roy Wilson that began with an anecdote in which she and costar Cindy Williams saved a stray dog, Marshall urged an immediate end of “cruel unnecessary experiments,” The Detroit Free Press reports.

In appealing to the university, Marshall is adding her voice to a chorus of criticism about the National institutes of Health-funded cardiovascular experiments on dogs that the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has been trying to shut down since 2011. The group has filed complaints with the USDA, which has regulatory authority over the research program, and dusted last spring’s WSU commencement exercises with leaflets criticizing the experiments.

“The surgeries are so invasive and dangerous that as many as 25 percent of the dogs die during or after surgery, before the experiments are completed. All the dogs who make it through the experiments are then killed.” – Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

On its web site, the group says the experiments are scientifically flawed and, after two decades, have failed to produce any medical advances offering hope to millions of Americans with heart disease. Despite that, the researchers continue to collect almost $400,000 a year in NIH funding.

The research involves multiple surgeries, artificially induced heart failure and forced runs on treadmills, the group says, adding:

“The surgeries are so invasive and dangerous that as many as 25 percent of the dogs die during or after surgery, before the experiments are completed. All the dogs who make it through the experiments are then killed.”

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Marshall learned the dog named Laverne – a brown-and-white hound mix who underwent a surgery for training purposes and was then euthanized – from records obtained by Physicians Committee through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. Other dogs in the trials were named Shirley and Squiggy, another character on the sitcom.

According to the group, the researchers have lost the support of at least one of their colleagues, Dr. Joel Kahn, MD, a cardiologist and clinical professor of medicine.

Matthew Lockwood, Wayne State’s director of communications, said the laboratories were found to be in compliance in surprise USDA inspections filed as a result of the complaints in 2011 and 2013. The university’s record on humanely treatment of animals used in research is exemplary, he said.

They’re not beyond bending the the truth to create a story,” Lockwood said.

Marshall’s star power helps personalize the Physicians Committee’s advocacy efforts, John Pippin, the group’s director of academic affairs, said.