Petition to Stop Medical Students from Mutilating Animals

Here’s a letter I received from the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine’s mailing list. It’s a petition asking the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, to stop horribly carving up live animals (pigs, ferrets, gerbils, and snakes) with scalpels or infecting them with horrific diseases, and then killing them for medical student training courses. I hate this sort of appalling needless animal torture — it’s not just veterinary students that mutilate animals for education — medical students do it too, apparently!

(I’m actually kind of (pleasantly) surprised the medical students don’t use dogs for this (not that I think dogs are better than pigs or ferrets — I just really like dogs) — I was just talking to a very nice pediatrician and she was telling me when she went to medical school (I think in the 1980’s) the medical schools she went to had some sort of thing called a “dog lab” where they used a (healthy) dog for surgical practice and then killed it. She’s an animal nut, so she said it was difficult for her to be involved in, but she managed. Maybe pigs, ferrets, gerbils and snakes are more like human beings from a disease/surgery standpoint than dogs? I have no idea.)

If you find this sort of animal torture disturbing, please consider sending an automatic email to USUHS president Charles L. Rice, M.D., and the dean of the medical school Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D., and ask them to end the medical schools’ live animal lab program.

(If you have any questions about whether animals need to be used in medical education, here’s an interesting article about non-animal-using alternatives in medical schools.)

Here is the original action alert from the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine:

We need your help to end the use of live animals for medical student training at U.S. military facilities. Live animals are used and killed in medical student courses at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Md., and Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. PCRM filed a petition for enforcement with the Department of Defense (DOD) on July 2, 2008, asking for an end to this animal use. The Washington Post recently covered PCRM’s campaign.

USUHS is the country’s only military medical school. The teaching methods it uses impact medical student training at military facilities across the country. There are at least five live animal labs at USUHS. According to the school’s Web site and other documents obtained by PCRM, they include:

• A live pig lab offered to third-year medical students as part of a surgery rotation (this lab also takes place at Wilford Hall). At the end of this lab, the pigs are killed.
• A physiology lab using live pigs, offered to first-year medical students. At the end of this lab, the pigs are killed.
• An intubation lab using live ferrets offered to third-year medical students (also offered at Wilford Hall). Ferrets can suffer fatal injuries during these labs.
• A parasitology lab using live gerbils, offered to students as a means of studying the disease filariasis. For this lab, the gerbils are killed.
• A medical zoology lab using live snakes.

Please call, e-mail, fax, or write a letter to USUHS president Charles L. Rice, M.D., and the dean of the medical school Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D., and politely ask them to end the school’s live animal lab program. Being polite is the most effective way to help these animals. Send an automatic e-mail>

Charles L. Rice, M.D.
President
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Rd.
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
Phone: 301-295-3013
Fax: 301-295-1960
president@usuhs.mil

Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D.
Dean
F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Rd.
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
Phone: 301-295-3017
Fax: 301-295-3542
llaughlin@usuhs.mil

A DOD directive renewed in 2005 mandates that nonanimal alternatives be used if they exist. There are nonanimal teaching methods that achieve the educational goals for all five animal labs mentioned above. Many of these alternatives are currently in use at the National Capital Area Medical Simulation Center, a state-of-the-art simulation center operated by USUHS.

More than 90 percent of U.S. medical schools have eliminated live animal labs from their curricula altogether. Innovations in medical simulation technology, availability of alternatives, increased awareness of ethical concerns, and a growing acknowledgement that medical training must be human-focused have all facilitated this shift. Only eight out of 154 allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in the United States still use live animals in their curricula.

Learn more about live animal labs and what you can do to help end them. If you have any questions, please contact me at rmerkley@pcrm.org or 202-686-2210, ext. 336. Thanks so much for your help!

Best regards,

Ryan Merkley
Research Program Coordinator