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Actually I have more of a problem with working on rodents than I would on a dog or a cat. Maybe it's just because I have a pet guinea pig.....
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Animal Dissection
Started by One More Rep
Could be. My lab partner can't do anything to them really. She got bit by a white dog when she was young, so she's scared of anything that is white and fuzzy. She's a nice girl and helps a LOT, though, so I don't really care. Plus, I like doing all the surgery stuff. 🙂
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Then I'm not sure why you took issue with the guy who disagreed with your "Just basic ethics," when it may be that way for some, but certainly not for many.
Yeah. My lab partner last year was the same way. His name was Albert. Little Albert.
Exactly! I think this is the case for most "animal lovers" but most are too afraid to admit it.
I wouldn't.
The anatomy of a pig or a dog is different enough, that I can't imagine that practicing the insertion of a central line in an animal will help you much.
And why practice putting central lines in animals, when you could buy a mannequin/human simulator, and reuse it over and over again? In the long run it would be more cost effective.
In med school, you practice putting IVs in dummy arms. You practice delivering babies from a human simulator. Why practice putting in central lines in animals, then? 😕
I'm not even into animal rights, and I still don't see the point of using animals in medical education. If you use animals for research or whatever, that's fine. But teaching med students? It's kind of useless - not to mention an enormous waste of money.
(And if you think that the resident or attending is just going to sit by and let a med student "royally mess up on a patient"....trust me, isn't going to happen. Most med students don't get much of a chance to put in central lines anyway - it's an intern-level thing.)
im with you 100%. if it makes for better doctors...
anyhow, i was really disturbed by the OP's first post. You have no problem with dissecting a HUMAN being, but the thought of dissecting an ANIMAL turns your stomach? And you want to be a doctor? Sorry, but im a PEOPLE LOVER. Animal lover? not so much.
Yeah, I have NO problem dissecting a human being who GAVE CONSENT to be dissected. Also, I am going to be a PHYSICIAN, not a VETERINARIAN. I would prefer to learn from human parts....you know, the ones I will actually be dealing with in my career. 🙄
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so what are you saying, we should start asking the rats to sign something before we drug them to better understand the workings of the human heart, brain, etc in labs?
this is 100% true...I guess i dont really understand the point of using animals to begin with, i mean from an anatomical/physiological standpoint. Like what a poster said like three posts above about central lines, practicing ivs on a pig, etc. But hey, what do i know. if some anatomy prof. thinks it will help me be a better dr, im all for it.
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The lower airway anatomy of a dog is very similar to that of a human. I am an Emergency Medicine resident and at my program we have "dog lab" three times a year to practice emergent surgical airways and other procedures on live, anesthetized dogs which are euthanized at the end of the lab. The point is that we don't get to do that many surgical airways on real patients. It's not like we "cric" people every day. I have never done, and may never do, one on a real patient until some day I am working in a small rural Emergency Room and you bring in your thirteen-year-old in severe respiratory distress with a "can't ventilate, can't intubate" presentation and I have about three minutes to get a surgical airway on the kid before his brain starts to die. All those dead dogs will have been worth it. End of discussion. Case closed.
You folks need to grow up. You will do a lot worse things than kill a dog or two in your medical career, dogs that are usually shelter animals and heading for euthanasia anyways.
Other procedures we practice:
Thoracotomy (Cracking the chest)
Diagnostic Peritoneal Lavage
Venous Cutdown
Floating Internal Pacemakers
Femoral Central Lines
Chest Tubes
Suturing
If you get to go to an animal lab take advantage of it and do every single procedure you can.
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You are wrong. That's all. I have done more chest tubes, for example, on dogs, and the first one I did on real patient was a snap because I had done a few on dogs which do in fact, if they are large dogs, have similar anatomy and more importantly, a similar "feel" to the real thing.
thanks for the info. because i said right above, i would totally do it without hesitation at all, if i thought it would help me with learning techniques. now i know it will. better to practice on a dog, than a human, right? but NOOO....dogs can tell you no. humans can. so lets find humans who will say yes, and experiment on them. Am i the only one who is thinking Tuskegee Syphilis?
Gosh. cutting open a poor cute little dog. Sorry, just look at the food chain people. Has anyone even read survival of the fittest? if youre so obsessed with animals, go work in pets mart, or become a vet, but y u going to med school?
thank you!!! thats what I thought when i read this thread-people really need to grow up.
thanks for correcting me, thats why i said "HEY WHAT DO I KNOW" - i have NO clue, but everyone on here seemed to be saying, "its totally pointless, because of their different anatomy blah blah blah," and I was kinda skeptical. Thats why I said, if im TOLD by an anatomy prof, or someone higher up (say a surgical attending), do xy and z on this DOG to learn, Id totally do it, because if it will help me become a better doc, im gonna do whatever it takes.
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Your mentor is an idiot and I guess everybody at my residency program, from the program director to the interns, are soul-less.
I think the fact that they are animals that are close to our heart make it difficult. We have an odd connection with dogs and cats that we don't really establish with other animals. We endow them with these human characteristics. Cadavers and imaging just aren't a substitute for the tactile feel of living tissues. I'm not sure whether I "condone" it or not but I can understand it. I do love how people complain about a couple of unconscious animals but then go and eat a sandwich or whatever else with a straight face. I'm not just talking the meat. If any of you have ever driven combines to harvest grain, wheat, soy then you'd see what kind of cute animal genocide is involved in your tofu. I once ran over 4 little bunnies at one time. It is not like I aim for them and take pleasure for it, but there are quite a few mice, rabbits, etc. that meet the blades. Unless you go out to an organic CSA and hand pick all of your own stuff, you have NO idea what is involved with your food. Disheartening to think of, but it is just a fact at this point. Don't live under false notions that because it is a vegetable you weren't involved in the somewhat painful death of animals.
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I love dogs, by the way, and love my five dogs (three of whom sleep on the bed) more than I like most people. But they're just dogs. There is no "canine race" whose rights need to be protected.
I find this statement quite offensive. "gods little people?" if their are gods little people, what should i consider my kids? You have to get a grip on reality. Sure G-d created them. Im very religious, and I also believe that animals are here to serve a greater purpose. but theyre not people. comparing an animal to a person is insulting to ME as a human being.orthodoc said:
so then the people who dedicated careers to curing diseases (including most of the people i work w/ here at the NIH), are all heartless? because we spend our days destroying "little people" as you say, AKA rats rabbits and dogs?orthodoc said:
um. and youre an attending where again? remind me? how do you know how it should or shouldnt be learned? are you the dean of medical education at the medical school for animals? dont make random statements if you dont have any data to back them up.orthodoc said:
right, which is WHY we practice on ANIMALS, in order to ensure that we become beneficent physicians and not inflict pain on our patients. "first do no harm," remember?orthodoc said:
You're right. I should have broken out my comment.
90% of schools no longer use vivisection. Some went that way because of money. Some went that way because of ethics. Med schools have changed a lot of their practices because of ethical concerns. How influenced by PR is debatable, but ethics nonetheless.
But you're right: to say that the fact that 90% of med schools have abandoned the practice purely because of ethics is just not proveable.
It'd be tough to say that the decisions are entirely about money though. The schools still using the animal labs run the gamut from well funded powerhouse insitutions to state schools that I've never heard of rolling in money.
If the reasons that 90% of schools have gotten rid of animal labs was mainly made on financial grounds, the 10 schools you'd see remaining would be big top name research insitutions, incredibly well-heeled insitutions and the leaders in medical education. Most of them aren't.
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I'd be curious to see if we could find any medical students who are pro-vivisection who attend the schools that don't have it. I can see the desire to support vivisection if you attend one of the 10 that still have it, but I'd be curious if anyone going to the medical schools that don't have it really feel like they're missing anything.
Also, I think folks are making some phantom arguments on this thread:
- Just because someone supports the use of animals in medical schools does not mean they don't love animals. They just feel that killing them is worth it in the big picture. How much you love animals is not black or white, it's a spectrum. At one of the spectrum is a meat-eater who drowns litters of unadopted puppies and swerves to hit critters in the road; at the other end of the spectrum is the vegan who doesn't wear leather and avoids anti-microbial soaps. Most of us fall somewhere in between.
- What is necessary to teach anatomy/physiology in medical school vs. what is necessary to teach clinical skills in residency are two entirely different things. You could make a good argument (as Panda did) that sacrificing animals for the sake of saving human lives by building clinical skills in residents is worthwhile. To make an argument that watching the beating heart of a dog slow down and die during physiology lab will somehow make you a better cardiologist is just weak. The merits of animal labs in residency would be interesting (and is much more common). The merits of using animals as a way to teach basic science concepts is a much harder sell and the reason that only a small number of schools do it.
- Paralleling the use of animal labs to teach basic sciences with the use of animals to find cure for disease is just silly. The hard core will not agree with the use of animals for anything at all. But to think that the slicing and dicing you do of live animals during your first year in medical school will lead to any kind of disease is a pretty tough argument to make.
- Just because someone supports the use of animals in medical schools does not mean they don't love animals. They just feel that killing them is worth it in the big picture. How much you love animals is not black or white, it's a spectrum. At one of the spectrum is a meat-eater who drowns litters of unadopted puppies and swerves to hit critters in the road; at the other end of the spectrum is the vegan who doesn't wear leather and avoids anti-microbial soaps. Most of us fall somewhere in between.
- What is necessary to teach anatomy/physiology in medical school vs. what is necessary to teach clinical skills in residency are two entirely different things. You could make a good argument (as Panda did) that sacrificing animals for the sake of saving human lives by building clinical skills in residents is worthwhile. To make an argument that watching the beating heart of a dog slow down and die during physiology lab will somehow make you a better cardiologist is just weak. The merits of animal labs in residency would be interesting (and is much more common). The merits of using animals as a way to teach basic science concepts is a much harder sell and the reason that only a small number of schools do it.
- Paralleling the use of animal labs to teach basic sciences with the use of animals to find cure for disease is just silly. The hard core will not agree with the use of animals for anything at all. But to think that the slicing and dicing you do of live animals during your first year in medical school will lead to any kind of disease is a pretty tough argument to make.
I see where you're coming from, Panda, but let me ask you this.
If someone were to kill one of your dogs, shoud the legal punishment be the same infraction as a kid who keyed your car? Since it's just property damage?
Unless your dog is one of those inbred, purse sized $1,500 a pup types, in which case I suppose it would be a felony. but you don't strike me as that type.
Animals in our legal system (and most) have some rights. Too many for some and not enough for others.
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It's probably also departmentally run. The physiology department in my school is quite well-funded, and it's one of the best in the country, and our course director and department chair trained with Guyton. Unless you know the specifics of each school and its departments and faculty, you sound like you're just making a prestige jab.
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I would never question the education of someone who didn't have the option, but I would tell them that I thought they missed out on a useful adjunct to their learning. A driving simulator is pretty close to a car, but it's not quite the same thing.
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My Border Collie, Nora, was hit and killed by a car three years ago. At no time, as much as I loved the dog, did I think the driver should be punished even though he was speeding. Animals don't have rights, rather we have laws to protect them from cruelty not for the least of which reasons that someone who would be intentionally cruel to a dog, say torturing one, would probably torture a human if he could get a away with it.
But we're talking about anesthetized dogs that are in a coma and are killed mercifully after we get done practicing our procedures. Although much of what we know about physiology today was elucidated by observing and experimenting on living animals, I agree that the yield for a medical student of an animal lab where an expensive animal with rudimentary feelings is killed to demonstrate something trivial is pretty low and not worth the effort. At a lot of medical schools this kind of thing only survived as long as the last of the old-school professors was around and when they retired nobody saw the need to continue the tradition.
But I assure all of you that it is much better to practice an emergency surgical airway on a dog than on a thirteen-year-old with severe anaphylaxis who has minutes to live. A certain degree of squeamishness, or decorum, or whatever you want to call it vis-a-vis animals is a good thing but let's not get silly.
I'm a cat guy (no I'm not gay) and actually have 2 cats. I took a dissection lab as an undergraduate and we had to dissect cats. Trust me, it's not a big deal at all. You'll get over the initial shock after your first hour or two of dissecting. Don't lose sleep over this issue.
...someone who actually makes a useful comment. Thanks! Everyone has hijacked this thread and turned it into a debate over the ethics of live animal vivisection/meat is murder/ blah blah blah. I merely wanted to know what animals, if any, medical students have had to dissect (which only one or two of you have even answered). I am not trying to make some ethical stand. I just DON'T WANT TO DO IT because I have a soft-spot for animals and I think it will be really traumatic for ME (not the whole medical student body). I am not going to derail my medical education because of it, but if I can choose schools that don't have it over ones that do, I will.
Sorry if it came across that way. I'm not knocking anyone's medical school. I'm just saying that if vivisection was this amazing trend that we were to see more of, the 10 schools that still do participate in vivisections would all be the Big Names. There's only one of those on that list.
I don't attend one of the Big Names. And frankly, I don't think that the Big Names correspond to a better education. I just don't see any indication that viivsection is the way to go and raw numbers indicate that medical schools agree.
We can talk about whether these schools are abandoing the practice for financial reasons, ethical reasons, or just the realization that the practice doesn't add anything, but I guess like you said, without knowing each school and it's departments and its faculty, it's all guesswork.
So without that, all we've got are the numbers. Only 10 medical schools in the country use it, a huge drop from back in the day.
This analogy works if we're going into taxidermy. If you are practicing a technique on an animal that you are about to be doing on humans, that's one thing. This is why I'd be hard pressed to derail the use of animal labs for surgical/emergency residencies.
But as a first year or second year medical student, I can't imagine anything I'd be doing to that animal that I'd be doing to people in a short enough window to for the simulation to have any impact. It's a nice gee-whiz impact to see a live, beating heart, but even if you were learning how to operate on it, that skill would be completely lost by the time anyone is going to let you grab a scalpel and approach a beating human heart.
I'm sure there are some nice things to see and do with a live animal on the table. But unless I'm convinced that it's going to have a direct impact on my ability to save lives, I'm not to take any life in the process.
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Makes sense. But some schools do keep around the tradition. I think it will be phased out in the next 5-10 years, but until it does, debates like this will continue.
I agree with this, though I'm sure many posters wouldn't. Personally, I'm fine in residencies practicing critical skills on animals if it means saving human lives. But like you said, I don't see the use in early medical curriculum. There's just so little gain.
Also, before anyone is tempted to go and start ruling out medical schools due to use of viivisections in the early years, when I inquired to schools about their practices back when, most indicated that students were able to opt-out if they did not agree with the practice and it did not have any impact on their grades.
Prowler- is this true at your school or do you know how other schools treat that issue?
If you refuse to attend a school based on moral grounds, that's one thing. But I wouldn't eliminate a school from the running if you're worried that they'll force you to do vivisecitons. From my understanding, it's a non-issue.
Prowler- is this true at your school or do you know how other schools treat that issue?
If you refuse to attend a school based on moral grounds, that's one thing. But I wouldn't eliminate a school from the running if you're worried that they'll force you to do vivisecitons. From my understanding, it's a non-issue.
My mentor is chief of orthopedics at a very well known program. I'm sure your opinion will mean a lot to them.
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It's no problem to opt out, and it really DOES NOT affect anyone's grade if they do so.
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Ah, so that makes him an expert in Emergency Medicine and ATLS.
You called this person an idiot. This person is Chief at a top, competitive surgical program, probably not an idiot, and certainly wouldn't give your opinion of them, or your idea of the best way to learn procedures, a second thought.
not trying to stir the pot, but if you opt out, the animal is still going to die anyways right because others will participate? i'd at least try to learn something from it if my opting out wasn't going to change anything. *shrug*
i guess that's just me though.🙂
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We worked in groups of five, so if five people opted out, they'd condense the groups, I would imagine. I'm not sure how many people opted out - I only know of two off-hand.
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Oh yeah? Ask him what he thinks about Emergency Physicans and others practicing emergent surgical airways on dogs. I betcha' he'll look sheepish and say, "oh, well that's alright."
Also, being the chief of a top competitive surgery program does not insulate you from being an idiot. Good Lord. Don't drink the Koolaid just yet. You can be a crackerjack doctor and still be an idiot.
It's possible, though this person was in critical care for years before surgery, so I don't know.
True enough!BTW, I think people probably misunderstood my first comments. My understanding of the actual meaning of vivisection is that it is NOT done under anesthesia. This is the subject I am strongly against, and that isn't changing.
So far, it seems everyone here has been discussing it being done WITH anesthesia, which probably isn't inflicting pain. It might possibly cause fear (I don't know) but in any case, I don't know that we have been arguing about the same thing.
Anyway - OP, we do nothing at my school involving animals.
I'm done.
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I admit it freely. I don't give a **** about a lab rat. I don't want them to be in any more pain than they need to be to serve their purpose, but they're there to experiment on and learn from. That is why they were born. Plus, they're ugly and mean little ****ers. Dogs are cute. I couldn't do anything to a dog, because I know I'd have to kill it relatively soon.
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