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The Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine petitioned Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, who is
charged with implementation of the Defense Department regulation on use
of laboratory animals, to end the use of live animals at the Uniformed
Services University of Health Sciences.
USUHS is a medical school that
graduates about 160 military and public health doctors per year.
Currently, live animals are used for surgical and other instruction in
San Antonio and at the school's main site in Bethesda, Md.
A military regulation, last updated in
2005, dictates that alternative methods to the use of animals be
considered and used if they produce scientifically valid or equivalent
results.
Dr. John Pippin, PCRM's senior medical
and research adviser, said pigs are being used for surgical instruction
and ferrets are being used to teach future pediatricians to intubate
infants.
Such uses for live animals are no
longer necessary because simulators offer equal or better instruction,
he said. Only eight of the nation's 126 medical schools still use live
animals, a practice that has been increasingly phased out with the
growth in high-tech alternatives, he said.
USUHS spokeswoman Carol Scheman said
the use of live animals is being reviewed, as is done every four years.
But in the past students have found the live animal work extremely
useful, she said.
"We use adjunct methods whenever
reasonable," she said.
Marion Balsam, a retired Navy rear
admiral and pediatrician, said she tried to persuade the dean of USUHS
to replace the use of live animals with simulators, many of which the
military already owns and uses.
"Even if there were no (military)
directive, it's a matter of common sense and human decency" to avoid
causing needless suffering, said Balsam, who concedes she thought little
of the issue when she was still in the military and occasionally
instructing USUHS courses.
The medical school instruction at
USUHS is similar to that of civilian institutions, but it includes an
emphasis on catastrophic medicine to equip doctors to work in harsh
conditions.
Scheman said the school looks for the
best ways to instruct those future doctors and the use of animals has
been part of that instruction.
"We need to turn out the best prepared
medical professionals in the world," she said. |
