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The scientific director and vice president of research at Lawson Research Institute has left the organization, a week after it emerged that clandestine cardiac tests were being performed on dogs at St. Joseph’s Hospital, prompting public outcry.

Her departure comes days after St. Joseph’s publicly announced it would immediately end research studies on dogs, following consultations with the province. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday that he was “deeply disturbed” by the research.

During an announcement in Windsor on Tuesday, Ford went further, promising to introduce legislation that would ban testing on certain animals in the province, prompting concerns about political interference in scientific research.

St. Joseph’s initially defended the research after the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB), based out of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, revealed dogs had been used for years as part of a heart study at Lawson.

Published in partnership with Postmedia, the report said researchers from Lawson had been inducing heart attacks as long as three hours in dogs and puppies as part of research aimed at accurately imaging post-heart attack injury and healing.

CBC News has not independently verified the reports from IJB.

Sourced from U.S. breeders, IJB said the dogs, some as young as 10 months, would be wheeled into the hospital in blanket-covered crates and taken to a lab on the hospital’s sixth floor. Loud music would be blared to drown out their barking.

The dogs would be euthanized, and their hearts removed for further study, the report said, citing two whistleblowers.

St. Joseph’s has said the research was conducted to “learn more about how to accurately image post-heart attack injury and healing that we cannot yet decipher using other models,” including artificial intelligence.