Medical students at Johns Hopkins should stop practicing surgery on live pigs, says the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
The PCRM-affiliated National Center for Animal Law wrote Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean of Hopkins? School of Medicine this week stating that the school?s live animal lab may violate the Animal Welfare Act. The letter focuses on Hopkins? use of live pigs to teach a third-year surgery course.
“As a representative of attorneys across the nation who care about the humane treatment of animals, as well as their legal protections, I strongly urge you to immediately cease using live animals as teaching tools,” wrote Laura Ireland Moore, executive director of the National Center for Animal Law.
Non-animal alternatives are widely available, according to the letter, and only 10 of 126 U.S. medical schools still use live-animals labs.
“If you look at what their peers are doing, it?s clear that the vast majority of medical institutes have rejected that practice,” said Dr. John Pippin, senior medical and research adviser for PCRM.
But Joann Rodgers, spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins, said the letter exaggerates both the school?s use of live animals and the scope of the Animal Welfare Act.
“We use alternatives such as a simulated surgery center,” Rodgers said. “We use a very limited number of pigs in those situations for which there is no adequate substitute.”
Dr. Barbara Wasserman, a 1968 graduate of Johns Hopkins who now practices internal medicine in Ellicott City, had mixed feelings about operating on a live dog during her training.
“It left me feeling ambivalent,” she said. “It was very interesting that we were doing this, but I also remember feeling guilty and feeling bad about doing the procedure on an animal that would eventually get euthanized.”
