Physician Profile
John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C.

As the director of cardiovascular medicine at the renowned Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Dr. John Pippin knows a thing or two about preventing heart disease. He’s been a vegetarian for years and encourages his patients to decrease meat, sugar, fat, and alcohol in their diets and to stay active every day.

And there’s no question that Dr. Pippin has a heart. From his earliest experiences in medicine, researching cardiac imaging techniques, he has steered clear of animal experiments, finding them a cruel and wasteful way to study human health. After receiving a five-year American Heart Association Clinician Scientist Award, Dr. Pippin carried out studies in nuclear cardiology at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), making important breakthroughs in cardiac imaging that would not have been possible using animals. There he was named director of the cardiovascular medicine fellowship program, and he was chosen as MCV’s Cardiovascular Medicine Professor of the Year three times.

As a dedicated and outspoken proponent of nonanimal research methods, Dr. Pippin is encouraged by changes such as those taking place in U.S. medical schools, the majority of which train students in far superior ways than were possible when animals were commonly used. “The groundswell of opposition to animal research, for both practical and ethical reasons, will continue to shift laboratories and funding agencies toward better methods,” says Dr. Pippin, who has written more than 60 publications on cardiovascular medicine and served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and MCV.