Dog Killed After Overdose at Methodist Hospital Research Institute: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
March 12, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the just-posted critical violation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture against Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, where a 10-month-old dog died after a staff member set an anesthesia pump to administer a dose in minutes instead of hours as required, and the dog received the entire dose at once, causing his heart to stop:

Overdosing a dog on anesthesia because you don’t understand how to work the medical equipment is an indication that the laboratory staff, the experimenter, and the animal experimentation oversight committee should be fired. There’s no excuse for incompetence of this magnitude—but we see it again and again in laboratories that exploit and harm animals. Superior animal-free research methods can and should be used right now.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.