‘One Sick Puppy’: New Boston Herald Ad Calls Out UMass Med School’s Disturbing Dog Experiments

For Immediate Release:
June 25, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA’s new ad in today’s Boston Herald exposes the face behind University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School’s (UMass Chan) painful and deadly experiments on dogs and urges locals to demand that the school modernize its research program by switching to superior, human-relevant methods.

Experimenter Matt Gounis, who is not a medical doctor or veterinarian, has exploited dogs in grisly experiments for more than 20 years. Gounis also chairs—and likely wields outsized influence on—the school’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, a panel that decides which experiments on animals can go forward.

In his laboratory, experimenters cut into the blood vessels of dogs’ necks in repeated surgeries, creating aneurysms and inducing strokes before killing them. Dogs endured untreated pain and unmanaged infections, and at least one swallowed a catheter that had carelessly been left inside her body after surgery.

A whistleblower reported that the dogs were deliberately fed too little food to avoid regulatory requirements for larger cages. Photos show visible ribs and protruding hip bones.

“Dogs in Matthew Gounis’s laboratory have been starved, repeatedly cut open in excruciating experiments, and killed, all while he’s chaired the committee that decides which experiments are approved,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA urges Boston residents to demand that UMass Chan shut down this laboratory and transition to state-of-the-art, human-relevant research methods that benefit human lives and leave animals in peace.”

Despite UMass Chan’s repeated failure to meet basic animal welfare standards, the school received more than $185 million in National Institutes of Health funding in 2025. PETA filed complaints with state and federal agencies and the UMass Chan chancellor, calling for the closure of Gounis’s laboratory and his removal from the animal experimentation oversight committee.

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