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Dear Doctor Kelch,
Two decades ago, medical schools let students practice emergency procedures on dogs.
Today, the University of Michigan is among a small
number of institutions that still use old-fashioned animal labs. More than 90 percent
of Advanced Trauma Life Support classes taught in the
U.S. and Canada benefit from human-focused simulators alone. Dogs, goats and pigs
just aren't effective teachers any more.
I respectfully ask you to terminate live animal labs. Apparently UM has even
incorporated companion animals from Michigan shelters into its
course materials. Since researchers are not required to learn a dog's origin,
it’s easy to wind up with someone's lost or surrendered pet.
Koda, a silver and black malamute sold to UM, died along with other dogs who were cut
open, practiced upon, and discarded.
I am shocked UM buys shelter animals from disreputable Class B dealers like R&R
Research to kill them in crude training drills. Moreover,
emergency medical training is better served by non-animal systems. As you know, the
American College of Surgeons endorses TraumaMan
System, Synman, human cadavers and other synthetic models for ATLS.
Overall, animal-free research cuts costs and improves proficiency. A timely New
England Journal of Medicine article highlights the "very
detailed feedback and more subtle measurement of trainee performance" gained from
virtual reality simulators. The article concludes that
inanimate models are safe, reproducible, portable, readily available and cost-
effective.
Students who gain surgical knowledge from dogs deal with inconsistent variables.
Incision pressure differs between dogs and humans. Shape,
angle, and texture of internal organs are also vastly incongruous. Why teach skills
inapplicable to human beings?
Please update University of Michigan trauma-management training with methods more
relevant to human anatomy and surgery.
Thank you,
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