I don’t know why the media is surprised when animal rights group are never satisfied. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine—which is a creature of PETA with only about 4% of its members being doctors—wants to stop medical schools from using animals in their teaching. From the story:
Although the Medical College of Wisconsin has stopped using dogs as live teaching tools, an animal rights group has now called upon the school to stop using pigs.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine called in a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Medical College to get live animals out of the teaching curriculum. The group, which says the use of live animals is unnecessary and cruel, has also put up a billboard on U.S. 45 that calling upon the school to stop…The American Physiological Society, the governing body for physiology education nationwide, endorses the use of animals in medical education, he said…
“The definition of ‘physiology’ is ‘the study of living systems,’” Allen Cowley, a Medical College professor and chairman of physiology there, said in an internal school memo. “The Medical College’s cardiovascular laboratory provides students with an exceptional learning experience.” Cowley said it was the “only opportunity that students will have in their medical education to experience the cardiovascular function of a large animal with similar responses as humans before they begin clinical work with patients.”
To which liberationists will say, “So what.” Proper welfare standards to them are as evil as Auschwitz. But don’t you want future doctors to learn on animals before beginning to practice on people? I sure do. And pigs are excellent for that purpose because their organs are very much like ours. Indeed, according to the story some other medical schools have done away with the use of live animals. But can simulators really expose students to the grit of dealing with actual living beings?
Media Members: I know that reporters use this blog as a research tool. I deeply appreciate that and indeed, serving as a resource is one of its primary purposes. But please: In your reporting you must understand that “animal rights” isn’t about being nicer to animals and improving animal welfare standards. It is about eradicating the status of animals as property and preventing us from using animals for any purpose no matter how beneficial to human thriving. That isn’t to say that sometimes the liberationists aren’t right when they expose inappropriate practices. But most see each and every act of animal husbandry, no matter how benign, as definitional abuse. Any analysis of these controversies must start from that truth.
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