Animal Research

[sunflower18]

I was just curious if anybody here has ever heard of or had a medical school interviewer act negatively about an applicant's involvement with animal research. I would hope that most interviewers would understand and respect the merits of working with animals, but stranger things have happened. So I was just wondering -- is there a chance that this research opportunity could be viewed as controversial from some schools?

I just started summer neuroscience research, and I am working with rats. Animal surgery is very interesting, and learning how to use surgical tools, suture, cauterize, etc. is really neat. But a few days ago, one of the techs mentioned that they had been harassed and threatened by animal activists because he works with and euthanizes animals, and it got me thinking about the controversy of the whole topic.

I'm assuming that negative responses would be more prevalent if an applicant worked with, say, primates instead of rodents. Is that true?

Any personal experience on the matter would be awesome! I saw a few similar-ish threads, but they were a few years old and didn't arrive at any major conclusions.

Thanks!

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[VisionaryTics]

I was just curious if anybody here has ever heard of or had a medical school interviewer act negatively about an applicant's involvement with animal research. I would hope that most interviewers would understand and respect the merits of working with animals, but stranger things have happened. So I was just wondering -- is there a chance that this research opportunity could be viewed as controversial from some schools?

I just started summer neuroscience research, and I am working with rats. Animal surgery is very interesting, and learning how to use surgical tools, suture, cauterize, etc. is really neat. But a few days ago, one of the techs mentioned that they had been harassed and threatened by animal activists because he works with and euthanizes animals, and it got me thinking about the controversy of the whole topic.

I'm assuming that negative responses would be more prevalent if an applicant worked with, say, primates instead of rodents. Is that true?

Any personal experience on the matter would be awesome! I saw a few similar-ish threads, but they were a few years old and didn't arrive at any major conclusions.

Thanks!

Considering that most academics have spent at least some part of their lives eviscerating small animals on the altar of human knowledge, no, it won't be a problem. Pretty much every single medical school will have researchers doing animal work.