MILWAUKEE, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ — To protest the start of a three-day course that will kill 60 dogs at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), doctors with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) will join members of the Wisconsin Humane Society and concerned Wisconsin residents for a demonstration outside the college. PCRM cardiologist John Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., will lead the protest, which calls on medical students to opt out of the controversial class.
MCW’s first-year physiology laboratory, which runs February 26-28, involves anesthetizing the dogs, opening their chest cavities, injecting pharmaceuticals, and killing the animals. The use of animals in the course has been criticized as inhumane and unnecessary by Wisconsin physicians, the Wisconsin Humane Society, medical students, and PCRM. MCW is one of just two U.S. medical schools still offering dog labs and one of the last medical schools in the nation using live animals to teach physiology. The Wisconsin Humane Society and other humane organizations have offered to find homes for the dogs, whose lives will be spared if MCW uses non-animal teaching tools. MCW has not accepted the offer.
“The death of these 60 dogs is especially disturbing because the Medical College of Wisconsin is one of the last schools in the nation still using live animals to teach basic concepts in physiology,” says Dr. Pippin. “There is simply no excuse for using any animal to teach physiology or other disciplines in the medical education curriculum.”
