We present this article to highlight the debate currently in progress over use of animal labs in student education. SDN has no formal or informal position on animal labs. Our volunteer members have a diverse view on this topic and have worked together in an attempt to cover this topic fairly and evenly.
Jeff Tomasini likes dogs. That was one of the reasons that prompted the first-year student at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) to opt out of a course he considers barbaric and unnecessary. During the three-day class that took place last month, Jeff’s classmates anesthetized 60 dogs obtained from the local pounds, opened up their chest cavities, examined their hearts, and then euthanized the animals.
“Killing an innocent animal is unethical,” Jeff says. “The top medical schools produce some of the country’s best physicians without ever harming an animal.”
And he is not the only one to protest the course that is fueling heated debates among students, physicians, and medical school educators across the country: do live animal labs have educational merit for medical students, or are they relics of the past?
At the center of the polemic is MCW’s physiology class that gives first-year students a rare opportunity to see a live, beating heart. MCW is currently one of only 14 medical schools in the United States offering a live animal lab.
Opponents of animal labs argue that technology – such as the widely used, life-like human patient simulators – eliminate the need to experiment on live animals. Proponents insist that such methods are effective teaching tools, especially since a dog’s cardiovascular system resembles that of a human.
“Computers cannot replicate the complexity of living systems,” Richard Katschke, Associate Vice President of Public Affairs at MCW told SDN. “Physiology, by definition, is the study of living systems. The live animal lab enables students to draw on the knowledge they have learned to date, and apply the information in a real-life situation. In student course evaluations, this lab receives higher ratings than any other course for first-year medical students.”
Indeed, in Jeff’s class of 204 students, only 12 opted out of the dog lab. And a few months ago three students wrote an editorial for their local paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, praising the course. “Based on our experience with this lab, the majority of our classmates agree that placing one’s hands on a beating heart, seeing live lungs inspire and expire, and seeing textbook knowledge literally come alive is an invaluable experience,” they wrote in an article endorsed by over 100 MCW students. “Our professors believe this teaching laboratory will make us better doctors, and of this we have no doubt.”
On the other side of the debate are organizations such as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a Washington D.C.-based group that promotes non-animal educational alternatives. PCRM has been criticized by consumer and professional watchdog groups, including the Center for Consumer Freedom, as being a “fanatical animal rights group” and serving as a front group for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“Using live dogs is a pitifully inadequate way to teach,” says John J. Pippin, Senior Medical and Research Adviser at PCRM. “Are students likely to encounter an open-chest dog in the clinics or their practices of medicine?”
He questions MCW students’ contention that seeing live organs in an anesthsized animal is an educational experience. “The students get one shot at the dog, can test at most a few drugs, can only see responses under the rigid and unnatural conditions of anesthesia and intubation, occasionally kill their animal or watch him die before they are finished, [and] get no do-overs after the animal is dead.” Pippin also questions the ability of inexperienced students to assess the usefulness this course would have for their future careers.
The American Physiological Society (APS), a Bethesda, MD-based organization for science and medicine professionals, disagrees. “This is a matter of educational quality,” Dr. Martin Frank, the APS Executive Director says in a published statement. “Students benefit from the hands-on learning approach that animal laboratories offer.”
That comment is echoed by many of the nation’s physiologists who see substantial educational merit in live animal labs. “These laboratories have provided medical students with an opportunity to directly observe the physiology, anatomy and response of both internal and external environmental stimuli on a live organism that responds in an identical or very similar fashion to the human,” James E. Smith, Professor and Chairman of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine is quoted on MCW’s website. “This is an invaluable educational opportunity that too many medical schools have abandoned.”
That position is endorsed on MCW’s website by several other physiologists from various medical schools, who say live animals provide experience and insight that other teaching methods do not.
“Physiologists and their professional organizations have a strong self-interest in preserving the use of live animals, because it’s what they know and sometimes one of the main reasons they are on faculty,” Pippin counters. “Live animal physiology may have applications to study comparative physiology or a particular animal’s systems, or for individual physiologists’ research interests, but not for students training to be medical doctors rather than physiologists.”
Rooshin Dalal, a student at University of Virginia School of Medicine, and a vocal opponent of animal labs, points out that “the argument about animal labs allowing students to touch living tissues is baseless. All of the same demonstrations can be easily observed in the human operating room – with the important advantage of learning about human anatomy and physiology – and surgeons will likely allow students in their third and fourth years to handle living tissue as well,” he says. “And, if there were some benefit to animal labs, wouldn’t most schools be using them?”
Currently 111 allopathic medical colleges in the United States no longer maintain animal labs. Pippin states that an ongoing PCRM survey, which includes top universities such as Pennsylvania, Mt. Sinai and Cornell, shows that replacing animals with simulation technology has had no adverse effect on curriculum or student performance.
“These (simulation) tools are so much better than using animals,” says one of the responders to the survey, Martin Eason M.D., J.D., director of the Patient Simulation Laboratory at East Tennessee State University Quillen School of Medicine. “No school should be depriving their students of them.”
In fact, most schools don’t. According to American Association of Medical Colleges, simulation and other technologies are now being used by 79 percent of U.S. medical colleges. MCW has top-of-the-line simulators as well, but offers the dog lab as an optional course.
Supporters of eliminating live animal experimentation scored one victory last week, when the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) passed a resolution encouraging the replacement of live animal laboratories with non-animal alternatives. The 65,000-member umbrella organization for premedical and medical students, interns, and residents also condemned the use of household pets from pounds, shelters, or random source dealers, thus reversing its earlier position, which endorsed pound seizures.
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This is just sick that in a civilized country people who want to save lives are forced to kill animals without any apparent reason or benefit to anyone.
As an MCW student I will say that I found this lab useful and interesting, and I felt it was done in an extremely humane manner, with animals that were going to be euthanized anyway. That being said, could I have had a satisfatory learning experience with a computer simulation?…Probably.
this isn’t necessary. how can we learn to value a life that we are meant to save by taking away the life of another living creature?
I personally don’t see a problem with it, so long as the animals are anesthetized prior to any procedures. They need to learn somehow and since we can practice on prisoners, it’s safer to let them practice on animals since nothing compares with learning on a live subject.
Of course, the article doesn’t mention that Milwaukee County kills 2200 stray dogs a year anyway w/o any educational value. I’m an MCW student and this was the highlight of med school so far for myself and everybody else I’ve talked to about it. It made text-based learning come alive and even though it was a brief experience, I’d like to insert my first catheter or make my first incision on a dog rather than a human patient. You quickly realize that there are real life repercussions for every move you make, unlike anatomy lab or something.
I think the experience of working in an animal lab could be incredibly exhilarating and fun experience. To see actual biological processes in action is an amazing learning opportunity… however, I think the way to go about it is to allow students into the OR, not to cut open the neighborhood stray. Not to mention when you really think about it, classroom simulations are very sophisticated now, and I highly doubt outing animal labs would be a devastating blow to classroom curriculum. I support phasing them out.
So, what happens if you live in Milwaukee County and your dog happens to escape from the backyard (or wherever) and gets picked up by the dogcatcher? Can you imagine taking your kid to the pound that day to pick up your dog, only to be greeted with, “I’m sorry, but he was taken to MCW this morning as a canine cadaver specimen?”
I think that this type of practice is totally unjustified. I would never agree to do it. To me it would be the same as cutting a living human open because he is homeless or has serious case of cancer and is going to die anyway. This is pure cruelty and all it teaches students is lack of respect for life-the last thing that anyone should be learning in med school.
I think the animal labs are extremely cruel. It is inhumane to cut open a live animal like that, even if it is under anesthesia. As others have mentioned we can’t do this on prisoners. If anyone tried to do that to a prisoner they could be thought of as a horrible person. If it would be a cruel procedure to do to a human, then it is cruel to an animal also! There are so many better ways to learn that using animals like this. Students can observe open heart surgery and get the same experience. People can use the excuse that the animal is going to be put to sleep anyway, but that doesn’t matter, when being put to sleep the animal dies in a much more humane way.
“So, what happens if you live in Milwaukee County and your dog happens to escape from the backyard (or wherever) and gets picked up by the dogcatcher? Can you imagine taking your kid to the pound that day to pick up your dog, only to be greeted with, “I’m sorry, but he was taken to MCW this morning as a canine cadaver specimen?””
No, actually, the runaway pets are simply killed by the county. The MCW dogs unwanted hunting dogs that are purchased from a USDA-licensed vendor.
I’m an MCW student, and the lab was very well-run, with excellent staffing by professors, veterinarians, physicians and grad students. I think the lab did have components that benefited me in ways a computer simulation could not (we do have computer simulations readily available as well). Animals are widely used for the purpose of research, and I don’t see how using them for educating physicians is a waste of life.
the dogs that mcw uses are not dogs that come from the county or any pound. they are purchased from a USDA inspected facility that houses hunting dogs that are no longer useful. people really need to get all the facts before they make assumptions about things.
The only way to prevent these dogs’ deaths is to adopt all of them. Stopping the lab exercise won’t prevent their deaths. Here are your two options:
1) Dogs euthanized but you never hear about it.
2) Dogs euthanized but medical students use their deaths to learn about cardiovascular phys.
This is just dumb:
“So, what happens if you live in Milwaukee County and your dog happens to escape from the backyard (or wherever) and gets picked up by the dogcatcher? Can you imagine taking your kid to the pound that day to pick up your dog, only to be greeted with, “I’m sorry, but he was taken to MCW this morning as a canine cadaver specimen?”
“the dogs that mcw uses are not dogs that come from the county or any pound. they are purchased from a USDA inspected facility that houses hunting dogs that are no longer useful. people really need to get all the facts before they make assumptions about things.”
And that’s better…. how exactly? That’s even worse, in my opinion. If any money is to be exchanged for the life of an animal I’d rather it go for improving things that help animals, like animal shelters. That said, it’s despicable either way. As someone above said, take the students a few at a time to a teaching hospital OR. Give them practical experience that is within their realm of specialty, humans!
I find it unfortunate the number of people going into the business of saving lives that can so easily toss life aside. The goal of that lab should have been to pick out the individuals who do care about life by standing up for it. A dozen students out of two hundred? Hrm… says a lot about people.
A classmate said it best after dog lab: “If any one of the 200 hundred or so people doing it save or improve just one life after this, then it is totally worth it.”
It is far more prudent to practice on animals than live human beings. It’s a shame that it’s taken this long for this very reasonable practice to be reinstated at medical colleges around the country. Studies done by surgeons’ groups have shown error rates increase overall from the years when surgical practice on animals were ceased. (Pigs were the typical model back then–I feel some of the practice’s opponents would be less stridently opposed if we were, in this case, talking about pigs rather than dogs.)
It’s amazing that Americans have the luxury to be so concerned about the lives of animals when there is so much human suffering in the world–look beyond your borders! Instead of lobbying for animal rights in America why doesn’t PETA mobilize its resouces to stop the decade-long genocide occuring in Darfur??? Or increasing access to potable water in Africa or India? Or helping sub-Saharan Africa address its health and economic issues?? It’s awful that instead they are limiting the educational options of future doctors, all of whom are giving up years of their own lives so that they may be trained to alleviate human suffering.
Foundling, please offer evidence of said increase.
If this logic is true, veterinarians in training should practice on humans that need to be “put down”…too bad there are more strays than people with life sentences or on death row. Additionally, are any of these schools that use live animals even in the top 20?
What is wrong with using an animal as a learning tool?As Doctors, our objective is to save human lives,not Dog’s.
I’m conflicted with this one. On one hand, I suppose there is a case to be made that such labs increase surgical efficiency, which is debatable. I’d like to see a comparison in the efficacy of those trained on animals vs. today’s most modern computer simulations. On the other hand, it helps desensitize the physician in training to life itself when you are regularly ending lives, albeit canines. Anyone familiar with Dr. Mengele or Unit 731 knows that there have been lines crossed that ended horrifically. I tend to feel that these animal labs are what paved the way for doctors like Germany’s Mengele and the Shiro Ishii of Unit 731 to carry out the horrors that they did — if you are trained that animal lives are expendible, given the opportunity, the most ambitious/immoral (yes, we can’t screen out all the bad ones) will want to carry out similar exercises on humans. It has only been 60 years since these experiments took place, some of which has probably found its way into modern textbooks in one way or another. I don’t think we should forget about them so soon. With the advent of computer simulation, it seems as if we have the ability to eliminate the need for such labs.
I work in a lab that uses canines. I was disgusted with my fellow scientists’ lack of respect for the lives of the dogs — I was present for one dissection, and prior to the euthanization of the animal, everyone was joking about killing it and making fun of the way it fell to the ground and died, etc. Some of them are med students. It really bothers me how some people view this. Technically IACUC protocol is followed, but judging from their actions, they only follow it because they’re afraid of the repercussions, not because they actually care.
I am glad I put my first chest tube in on an animal……I know I wouldn’t want a student/resident putting their first one in on my wife or son.
I’m in veterinary school. We don’t even do that in our surgical courses for dogs. It’s immoral and wrong. There are tons of non-killing models for surgery and anatomy including plastinated sections and special surgical educational models that use dead animals with a phony pumping heart that actually squirts blood if you cut vasculature, etc. UWisc needs to get with the program…
The use of animals for training and research is nothing new. Many animals are bred solely for research, and many lives are ended by being anesthetized and cut open and perfused with paraformaldehyde until they die.
Now are we caring here because they’re dogs and pets? A large number of mice die everyday in the name of biomedical research.
I think humans are unique in their compassion for living things. As a result we have competing interests in our natural instinct for survival and the care of another. Who has the right to life?
Taking a life is never right, whether it’s an ant or a dog or human. But life will not exist without death, and if death can bring life, that is merely part of the cycle.
I kill mice every week or so as part of my research. I hate it. But then I think of all the lives they and their brethren have saved and will save. So I bow to them and give a prayer for their souls.
Respect others lives and the knowledge you gain from them, and use the knowledge well. Doesn’t make it right, but at least you’re not callously wasting lives.
alright people, humane treatment is for HUMANS. now, what’s so wrong about opening up a dog? people are opened up in OR’s every day. oh, but they’re not getting killed, so what? are any of you going to adopt the damn dogs and give them food and shelter? if peta had always been around, there is a lot of experiments that wouldn’t have taken place, slowing down the advances of science. what do you guys think veterinarians train on? stuffed animals? i would be against it if the dogs were killed like cows in a slaughter house, but they’re not. and you people that are so against this, did you ever had a chance to dissect a frog? were you against it too, or were the frogs not cute enough.
I agree with Anonymous.
Unfortunately I can’t direct you to any cites, very sorry Max. These were studies done back in the 80’s and 90’s.
“This is just sick that in a civilized country people who want to save lives are forced to kill animals without any apparent reason or benefit to anyone.”
Wow. I guarantee you aren’t a real physician or medical student. Do you know how many lives have been saved by animal testing? How many drugs discovered? Wait…you probably think all drugs are the result of the pharmaceutical industry, and are therefore bad. Wait, physicians are bad too because they just want money. Wait, in your book people are either good or bad with absolutely no gray area in between, because you have what we scientists like to call Borderline Personality Disorder. Look it up. And while you’re at it, take a good look at which parent didn’t give you enough love and go fix it some other way.
i’m a surgical resident. i put my first chest tube in on a kid. it went fine. to the dude who thinks i needed to practice this on an animal…get real. a lot of “firsts” happen on people all the time by residents. with simulator training and, oh…here’s an idea…reading about the procedure you’re going to perform, things go very well. as for the “unpredictables” that occur with procedures, there’s no way in hell that practicing on a dog or pig is going to prevent them. if patients feel uncomfortable being treated by residents, have them go to a private, non-teaching hospital. simulator training will replace all of these techniques in the next 10 years. every teaching medical center worth their salt is investing in sim technology. it’s been comprehensively discussed and approved by the ACS (american college of surgeons), and the drive to perfect this technology is massive. what sounds better to you: doing some lame procedure on an animal, or actually going through an entire procedure or operation using a cpu/virtual model so that you’ve practiced the procedure 10 times before you actually do it? Repetition is the key in surgery/procedures, and there’s no way in heck that anyone, even the fogies at these obsolete medical schools, can be allowed to kill that quantity of animals. sim training allows easy repetition, video analysis of your performance with comparison to previous attempts, and a much greater breath of “real-life exposure” in the context of relevant anatomy. get real people…animals, even to the deluded who think that killing them is educational, are a poor substitute for quality training on sim/cpu systems. ask your institutions’ surgery PD (program director) and see which one he or she prefers.
Any idiot can cut open a dog, then let it die. Are you being trained as a butcher or a doctor? Here’s an idea: teach students to open up a dog, examine it, then close it back up with no damage done. After all, no one plans on vivisecting, then euthanizing their patients, right?
I opted out of dissecting a frog back in undergrad biology. I never saw the inside of a dead frog. And I aced the anatomy test. Shocking!
If any of you has researched animal based research based on its applicability to humans, you will be unsurprised to learn that there is little, if any applicability to human research. (This material is available from Cochrane Reviews and others). MORE importantly, the fact that any of you believes that dogs should not be given a choice are barbaric in my estimation. Dogs are infintely more intelligent than you believe. Furthermore, they devote themselves to us; a different species. DOGS are the only non-human species to regard US, the humans as their family or pack. PLEASE do not harm this wonderful creation that unlike us, possess nothing malicious in intent.
I don’t understand the ethical dilemma. These dog labs are a combination of euthanasia and animal surgery, both of which are widely accepted as necessary. If a dog is going to be euthanized anyway then why not gain some sort of educational experience out of it? The dog doesn’t know the dfference. Just like a dog having surgery or a person having surgery it can’t feel the pain. Furthermore, the end result is the same. The dog will be dead either way.
I wish we brought them back completely. Instead of performing your first chest tube, intubation, or laparoscopic procedure on a human a dog could be used. I think everyone agrees that making mistake on an anesthesized dog is better than making a mistake on a human.
So many of your are so disgusted about the dog lab. But how many of you have freely and willingly dissect or conduct research on rats, rabbits, frogs, and other animals? The fact that it’s a dog strikes closer to home. Are any that protest the dog lab out there protesting the cat dissections that occur in hundreds of high schools and undergrads every year. Ironic, considering cats are our pets as well. The hypocrisy is astounding.
And to claim that I, as an MCW student, am uncaring, malicious, and toss life aside with no worries … what an ignorant statement.
Until the pet population is under control, dogs are going to die everyday. Yet the large majority of these deaths go completely unnoticed.
It is downright wrong to assert that there is “little if any” good that came out of animal modeling.
And surgical resident, sims are not yet available at all educational institutions and until they are how can you argue that animal models, if only second-best, are worse than nothing?
Yes, a lot has come from animal modeling. Most of the drugs we enjoy today, many of the early surgical procedures perfected (especially plastics…ugh, poor bunnies), and the entire cosmetics industry up until the late 1990s had the successes they had because of animal modeling. Our knowledge of biochemical pathways in the realm of research has exploded in the last 20 years because of advanced molecular techniques…all of which draw on animal substrates for their components from an experimental and materials standpoint (i.e. ordering some goat/rabbit/hamster/dog/pig/horse anti-mouse antibody that will fluoresce when it binds to your protein on western blot). And let’s not forget about all of the physiological knowledge of the body we obtained in the early 20th century because of animal modeling (ahem…Starling curves and sleep deprivation studies, anyone?). I think the idea here is that technology has come a very long ways since animal modeling began, and to be honest technology has greatly surpassed animal modeling in many situations, including medical school education. I have no doubt that animal sacrifice for science is necessary for furtherment of our knowledge (this, of course, is subject to debate). However, we need to evaluate the tasks that necessitate animal sacrifice. Medical school education, while important, is VERY LOW on the totem pole for sacrificing animals, especially when sim technology is out there. If a med school does not have this technology, they need to stop buying pool/foosball tables for student lounges and stop throwing “med school proms” and start investing in their students. “Lack of funds” is no excuse…if you can’t afford to train the next generation of students with current technology, you need to be put on probation or shut down. Simple as that. Deans of medical schools can’t go with the “cheaper” option of animal modeling while they bank 600K+ a year in salary. Report these pricks to the local paper. Animal usage in medicine, at least in the basic science community, is here to stay at least for the time being (and believe me, the rules that govern this use is strict). However, medical schools and attendings that advocate animal testing will find themselves on a slippery slope – these animals will over time be harder to come by, their use is inferior to sim technology in almost every possible way, and that it is becoming increasingly unpopular in the public arena to sacrifice animals for a cause as abstract as “medical school education”. Med schools need to upgrade their educational regimes…if that requires redistributing money within the school’s system, so be it. But with regard to the “animal experience in medical education”, there is nothing that the students at MCW (or any other med school that has animal modeling) witnessed that cannot be more accurately and consistently portrayed with a simulator or cpu mannequin – the principles that are trying to be taught are fundamental, and the techology to demonstrate these principles exist, are accessible to schools, and are simply superior to older methods.
““Lack of funds” is no excuse…if you can’t afford to train the next generation of students with current technology, you need to be put on probation or shut down. Simple as that. Deans of medical schools can’t go with the “cheaper” option of animal modeling while they bank 600K+ a year in salary.” – Surg Rez
Actually, the dog lab is extremely expensive to put on, and our school does also have simulators. So it is not a question of money at MCW. The dog lab continues because of the high % of participation and the student evaluations. Most schools have discontinued dog labs purely based on money, not any ethical dilemma.
Listen…play around with your dogs all you want. When you get into the real hospital (and no, not your clinical skills instructor taking your little group on a hand-held tour of some patients to “examine”), you’ll realize how totally useless these kinds of exercises are and why there’s such a push to create realistic simulation exercises. To argue this point with anyone younger than a late MS 3 or MS 4 is sort of a waste of time…. It sounds like you’re a first-year…come back in a few years when you’ve encountered some really terrible situations in the hospital where you felt that maybe if you had been exposed to or practiced some scenarios a few times before, you might have been able to save someone’s life. And giving a sedated dog epinephrine to see his heart beat faster is unfortunately not going to be it.
Continue discussion here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=387142
i feel really bad for the dogs. this isn’t right. i have been a victim myself but am not a dog. i went in for surgery, a simple carpal tunnel surgery. the scope was handed over to a resident and he cut my ulnar nerve. i developed RSD as a result of that surgery. i’ve had 4 surgeries to try to shut down the RSD with the 4th one being an implanted stimulator. honestly, i wish i could have been euthanized. what i live with each and every day i wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. the pain is unbearable. i understand doctors need to learn, but learn on people who have given proper consent. simulators of all different kinds are out available. you don’t need dogs nor do you need unsuspecting human guinea pigs. after my surgery, i felt like a speciman laying there not a human. my trust and confidence in doctors was broken. i was a young mother with two small children. my life is forever changed. please remember next time you go to perform surgery or procedure on a patient, that the patient has a name, has hobbies, has interests, has a family, has a job. we’re not dogs laying there on that table. we aren’t just teaching/learning opportunities. we came to the hospital to get better.
(victim but not animal)is right. The state of today’s doctors i believe, i may be wrong, but the way i see it is that doctors dont care. they dont have time to see that their patients are humans, they just see them as objects that they must do something to. i have had a horrible plastic surgeon who did a procedure on someone i know very closely, which wasnt even needed at all, as the wound originally could have healed perfectly on its own. but greedy as he is, did the procedure, and now the person is in pain everyday, and there is no chance that the part of the body will heal. I feel like kicking the guy’s ass everytime i think about it, but what can u do, doctors suck, money makes the world go round and round.
I am also a vet student and we have a similar rotation at my school. As a 3rd year, we may participate in an elective “pig lab” where we receive a new pig each day (under anesthesia) to perform procedures on for the day (nephrectomies, enterotomies, cystotomies, skin flaps, etc.) that many of us may actually encounter in private practice in the future. We are not required to complete residencies or specialize, so the experience is somewhat of a necessity.
Fortunately many vet schools are extremely progressive in the humanity and ethics of medicine and animal use. The pigs used are those being sent to slaughter with no chance of survival or entrance into the food chain (several are so ill they pass after being induced) so they serve a beneficial purpose before. We also have an anesthetist to watch over them and they never have to wake up to feel any pain.
I agree that the experience was excellent for learning how to combat actual blood loss and deal with living tissues. The animals were not harmed and probably had a more peaceful exit than what sometimes go on with the stressors of a slaughterhouse.
However I have to argue with the use in medical schools. Yes, it may be great to practice a chest tube, intubation or place an IV catheter in an animal so your first time is not on a person. However each species has its own idiosyncracies and variable anatomy. Just because I can intubate a horse like a champ does NOT mean that I would be comfortable nor experienced at doing a cat or a human. I agree with the anonymous post that practice is what will prevail in any procedure.
If the value were to fit somewhere in human medical teaching, I would think it would be for those who may actually perform the procedure in the future based on their specialty and level of education. I see no need for 2nd year med students to need it as opposed to a 3rd year surgical resident.
And lastly, the human-animal bond has evolved immensely over the past 20 years. Many people view their pets as their children and family, and no one wants to hear about cruelty or abuse to them for educational or any other purposes. We are not a Third World country and so we do not view animals as such.
Frightning to me are those who laugh or joke in the expiration of any creature’s life. Pain receptors and fear are the same physiologically across the board. Realize there is a strong connection between those who abuse animals and who later abuse people…comforting to know that the newest Jeffrey Dahmer may be my future physician!
Just some food for thought…
Sure, the dogs will be euthanized after the lab, and the probably will be euthanized in the animal shelter. Does it make it OK that you experiment on them just because they will eventually die? We all will eventually die. So can we experiment on each other? Patients in Oregon electively die under euthanasia. Can we experiment on them? Pain and suffering is the same…but perhaps its OK because you can’t hear the dogs cry? Lets practice humane medicine, not the cruel blood purging of ancient times.
We teach students to think abstractly so that they can envision how the heart works and not necessarily need to feel it.
I honestly think a lab like this would be very exciting, an eye-opening experience. I want to go into the medical field and to participate in a lab such as this sounds appealing, although many others are appalled at the thought.
Yes, the dogs are euthanized, but they are handled in a humane manner. There are thousands more dogs in the world today that are euthanized because there is no other place for them.
A lab like this can teach students how delicate a life is, a thought they can apply when they operate on humans in the future.