I've been doing a rewatch of Grey's Anatomy, and I just got to the season 5 episode where the residents have a skills lab involving saving live pigs after one of the attendings stabs them (under anesthesia, and the pigs were euthanized following surgery). I know a lot of things on Grey's are heavily exaggerated, but I'm now wondering if med students/MDs ever actually do things like that. Working with animal models during research is one thing, but does med school give proper training on species differences so that MDs could perform veterinary surgery?? I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm almost certain a vet operating on a human would be illegal, so I'm wondering why it's presented as fine the other way around. Maybe it is just as illegal and the show just chose not to present it that way -- the doctors on Grey's certainly do a lot of other things that real-life doctors could never get away with. Regardless, the discussions in the episode on terminal surgeries and animal testing were a lot more interesting than when I last watched it, at age 16.
