10 Reasons to Scrap the Medical School’s Dog Lab
1. The dog lab kills dogs. When dogs come from shelters (or from dealers who buy them from shelters), it is often the most adoptable dogs who are taken, because they are former pets and are easy for lab personnel to handle.
2. Before they are killed, the dogs
are traumatized. Shipping, caging, isolation, restraint, noise, and abnormalities
in food, water, and lighting are routine in animal labs.
3. If anesthesia is not carefully monitored,
the dogs may awaken during the laboratory and experience pain and trauma.
4. Dog labs aggravate animal control
problems. Some people abandon dogs rather than bring them to shelters if
they fear that the animals may end up as lab specimens. The result is more
litters, and more unwanted animals.
5. Many students find dog labs offensive.
Some schools report that student opinion played a role in eliminating these
exercises.
6. Doctors seek to “first, do no
harm.” Animal labs may encourage a desensitization to suffering and
death, and reinforce the idea that nonhuman animals are “things”
that do not have lives of their own or the ability to feel pain and fear.
7. Basic medical concepts are better
taught with lectures, readings, supplemental videotapes, and computer and
videodisc simulations. They are repeatable and do not pose the distractions
of live animal labs.
8. Doctors get plenty of hands-on experience
during internship and residency assisting in operating rooms and other clinical
settings under close supervision, using synthetic teaching aids when appropriate.
That is the ideal and traditional way of learning surgical techniques.
9. Top schools have already dropped
dog labs, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Baylor, and more than a
quarter of all other American medical schools.
10. Money should be used for better educational experiences. The University of Minnesota recently reduced the use of dog labs in its courses and expects to save $35,000 to $45,000 a year.