182 | Dogs and settled a continent New York: North Point Press Duggan, Paul 2007 A blood sport exposed: Vick case puts dogfighting culture in the spotlight Washington Post, August 22, 2007 Gibson, Hanna 2005 “Dogfighting detailed discussion,” Animal Legal and Historical Rights Center, Michigan State University College of Law, 2005 http://www.animal law.info/articles/ddusdogfighting.htm#s2 Humane Society of the United States Animal Cruelty and Fighting Campaign www.hsus org/act/ Mark Derr DOGS Over the years, dogs have been widely used in biomedical research to investigate heart disease, bone injury, hearing loss, blindness, lung disorders, infectious diseases, the effects of lethal poisons, and other conditions that have relevance to human health They are also used to study the nutritional value of dog food In the United States, the number of laboratory dogs used peaked in 1979 at 211,000 animals per year Recently, the numbers have declined so that in 1995 the number had dropped to 89,420 per year In 2006 more than 87,000 dogs were used for research, a sharp increase from previous years in which 65,000–70,000 dogs were used annually (http://www.aavs org/researchDogs.html; see also http:// www.hsus.org/animals_in_research/spe cies_used_in_research/dog.html) To put these figures in perspective, dogs comprise a relatively small fraction (less than about one percent) of all animals used for research Nevertheless, the use of any dogs for research has always been controversial Dogs are a well-loved species and public sympathy for dogs runs high Controversy over the use of domesticated dogs for research has a long history In the early days of animal experimentation, the 19th-century French physiologist Claude Bernard encountered fierce public criticism because he performed painful experiments on dogs On one occasion, he was reported to have experimented on the family pet, which caused his wife and daughter to become antivivisectionists In those days, there were no commercial breeders of laboratory animals, and it was hard for researchers to obtain suitable animals for their work In the 20th century, as the volume of animal experiments increased, researchers found a ready supply of dogs and cats for their work from shelters and pounds Shelters and pounds are places where lost, stray, and abandoned animals are temporarily housed By law, shelters have to retain animals in their care for a certain number of days so that owners have an opportunity to reclaim their pets or, alternatively, adoptive homes are sought If a suitable home is not found, the dogs are often euthanized In 1945, a lobbying group for animal researchers was formed whose primary purpose was to work for passage of state laws to permit researchers to have access to unwanted and unclaimed animals in shelters These efforts persist to this day However, these efforts are strongly resisted by members of the animal welfare and animal rights movement, who hold that shelter animals should not be used for research Leading humane societies including the Animal Welfare Institute, the Humane Society of the United States, the American Humane Association, and others have been involved Currently, state laws are mixed Some states, notably Minnesota, Utah, and Oklahoma, specifically require shelters to hand over their animals to research, whereas 17 other states prohibit this practice (http://www