Group Asks Med School To Stop Using Live Animals

photo credit: Sarah_Jones

The U.S. military's medical school in Bethesda is drawing criticism from a coalition of physicians and military officers for using live animals in some medical procedures, such as surgeries, a practice many medical schools have long abandoned.

Students and faculty at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences insert breathing tubes in live ferrets to practice intubation of human infants, and they perform surgeries on live pigs, according to a petition for enforcement to be filed today with the Department of Defense.

The petition alleges that the military's use of animals in medical classes "inherently and unavoidably causes pain, distress, and suffering to those animals."

The petition, brought by the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, asks the university to instead use alternatives, including high-tech human simulators used by many other U.S. medical schools.

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