Its The LAST Medical School To Stop Using Live Animals!
AnimalCare 
Jul 6, 2016 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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A few days ago, we celebrated the fact that the University of Tennessee College of Medicine had agreed to stop using live animals in their surgical training. Did you know that this the very last of medical schools in the U.S. to stop using live animals?!!
Please read here: http://www.care2.com/causes/victory-last-u-s-medical-school-stops-using-live-animals-for-student-training.html
Public pressure clearly influenced this decision, demonstrating yet again what well organized pressure from animal advocates can accomplish.
Johns Hopkins University made the same announcement in May 2016, leaving UTCMC as the last school using animals as live teaching props. Having all eyes pointed at this one school made this choice to change a fairly urgent public relations concern, apparently. UTCMC made its announcement on June 24, 2016.
What it used to be:
In years past, medical students had to participate in mandatory laboratory sessions using live animals like dogs, pigs, sheep and goats. They learned to perform various highly invasive procedures on them, such as incisions and suturing techniques, organ removal, airway management, traumatic injury treatment, emergency procedures and drug injections.
When it was over, the schools euthanized the unfortunate animal subjects. The animals lived and died only to serve as fungible teaching tools. By the way, how do you think those traumatic injuries got there in the first place? Don’t think too long — you know the answer and it’s heartbreaking.
“[Animals] are inadequate and often misleading stand-ins for humans,” said PCRM in its press release. “Training students with animals also gave trainees the false impression that the use of animals was fundamental to the field of science.”
Eventually, more and more medical schools realized what PCRM has been saying for years. Human and non-human physiology are different. What’s effective treatment on a pig or a dog isn’t necessarily effective on a human. Sometimes, it’s demonstrably not similar at all.
Even if animals and humans respond to treatment in exactly the same way, there are now impressively accurate human patient simulators that make using animals completely unnecessary. As this fact became apparent, one by one medical schools stopped using live animals. The fact that it took this long to get all U.S. and Canadian medical schools to drop animal use is shameful.
That’s all in the past, though. Be happy — a years-long campaign to do right by animals achieved its goal. Bask in the satisfaction of a successful outcome.
Human patient simulator
Enough of using animals for humans’ selfish gains.
Animals are here with us, not for us.
We hope other medical schools will stop using live animals in their surgical training too.
Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2016/07/06/its-the-last-medical-sch..
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