Beginning next month, one of the country’s premiere medical schools will no longer use live animals to train its students. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will be eliminating the controversial course in which students operate on live, anesthetized pigs.
Activists have been calling for an end to the practice for years, as after the surgeries, the pigs are euthanized. But the course isn’t ceasing due to the outcry from animal advocates. Instead, the school is retiring the curriculum because the course was not found essential after a year-long review.
Medical school spokeswoman Audrey Huang told the press that medical students have always given glowing reviews about the course.
“The students have historically always been huge fans of this course,” she said.
But because the school’s curriculum undergoes regular review “to make sure we’re teaching at the cutting edge and that nothing gets stale,” the board decided it was time for a change.
“The dean’s office and the task force that reviewed the course felt that the class isn’t essential for turning out a great physician in training,” Huang said. “And it was the essential aspect of it that led to the decision.”
A bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature this year to ban the practice.
Credit: Wikipedia
According to the animal rights group the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the Baltimore-based university is one of two accredited medical schools in North America that use animals in medical education. Reportedly, the only other school to do so is the University of Tennessee College of Medicine campus in Chattanooga.
The group argues that future surgeons can practice using surgical simulations and virtual reality systems instead, reports CBS News.
Said John Pippin, M.D., and the group’s director of academic affairs:
“Simply put, pigs and humans do not possess the same anatomy. Students are best trained for their careers in medicine with advanced, human-relevant technology–not with live animals.”
Many activists believe the change was a long time coming. What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!
Seeing Photographs such as these are sick, twisted, and just down right awful. We have prisoners that are getting the death sentence, people that don’t want to live anymore at Final Exit Network in Georgia. Test on them. Animals most of the time, are then thrown away, not even passed on to death. They are just “thrown” away. Test on people. There out there somewhere, you just have to find them.
There are only two pictures in this article neither of which are of the practice they are just generic animal right lobbyist stock photos.
Settle the fuck down we slaughter these animals by the thousands for meat and glue products.
every heard of the constitution?
Just to avoid confusion, I do not endorse testing on animals, or humans on death row, or mentally ill people who are not in control of themselves or who find themselves in a state of mind where they aren’t able to reason as they normally would. Neither do I agree with capital punishment.
If a well reasoning adult, who doesn’t do it because they’re poor and got a starving kid at home or something similar, or who isn’t in any other way forced or coaxed into it, wants to offer themselves to advance science and let themselves be tested on then that is fine with me.
I’m saying this because we have the same name, and not only did I post here a couple of times on this site with this name, I might be posting here or there again in the future.
These are my words (in the comment sections):
http://anonhq.com/empirical-evidence-researchers-finally-confirm-life-death/
http://anonhq.com/men-hold-beautiful-dog-prepare-skin-alive-yulin-dog-meat-festival/
http://anonhq.com/russian-government-research-development-lab-hangs-black-man/
The above words (comment I’m replying to here) are not.
Thank you !!!
Horrible images! RESPECT FOR ALL ANIMALS!!!
This article is not written very well. “Testing on animals” as depicted by the cat, is nothing like surgery on pigs, which is what they are stopping. They use surgery on pigs to train on making cuts, organs, blah blah blah, pigs are close in texture to human skin.
Animal use at John Hopkins has not been stopped. This article should be taken down, its incorrect in too many ways.