Vet practices shouldn't harm animals, learning process
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Many students might be shocked to learn that after MSU veterinary students perform educational surgery on a live animal, the subjects are euthanized shortly thereafter.
That method soon will be history now that MSU has decided to change its policies on the use of live animals for learning — a right move as long as the quality of education doesn’t suffer.
In the fall, the College of Veterinary Medicine will switch to alternative animal surgery methods, such as cadavers. Current students learn on animals bred for scientific purposes, most of which are dogs. The animals are put through a process called terminal surgery. During surgery, the animal is put under anesthesia and euthanized when the procedure is complete. Officials said the university slowly has been diverging from the current method while looking for new ways of teaching. They don’t believe it will affect the quality of education.
It is great the university is searching for alternative educational avenues. It’s unfortunate when any animal has to suffer, so preventing live animals from being euthanized for educational purposes is a positive step for MSU.
Although the new method is not expected to negatively affect the quality of education, only time will tell if that’s the case. The veterinary college is one of the premier vet schools in the country and has a long-standing reputation as such. Right now, there is no way to tell if the method on live animals and the success of the two schools are correlated. Human medicine is taught on cadavers, and doing so on the animals shouldn’t pose much of a problem. If it’s good enough for humans, it should work for animals.
If the university finds the new method to be less effective and is hurting the quality of education within the school in the next several years, MSU should seriously consider reverting to the old practices, unfortunate as they might be in some cases. Although animals deserve empathy, learning surgery on live animals was done in order to save other animals.
MSU followed the most humane way possible for using live animals, using Class A animals specifically sold by dealers for scientific purposes. Class B animal dealers sell subjects found at shelters and pounds. If the most effective form of educating future veterinarians is to use live creatures, the university should attempt to find a way to do so without killing the animals. But if the same effective learning can be done with animal cadavers and other methods not involving live animals, then MSU should keep those techniques.
MSU always has been an agricultural school. Members of the university administration and countless students love and respect animals while looking out for the their best interests. Children don’t aspire to be veterinarians so they can euthanize animals. The vet students are at MSU to learn the best way to save animals’ lives, and MSU should use the method that works best.
Commentary
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Bill
(03/15/10 6:14am)Report
This is petty, but re: first sentence (as it exists at this moment), the use of ‘after’ and ‘shortly thereafter’ in the same sentence doesn’t work.
Surgeries
(03/15/10 12:04pm)Report
I got news for the bleeding heart PETA people. If this person is a veterinary surgeon, they will eventually be doing surgeries on LIVE ANIMALS! If you’d rather they learn in an apprenticed less supervised setting cutting into people’s pets and livestock for the first time, then you are completely insane.
MaximumBob
(03/15/10 12:37pm)Report
“They don’t believe it will affect the quality of education.”
They’re lying, to us and to themselves. As with any profession or vocation, training with something as close to the real thing is a distant second only to the real thing.
doctor
(03/15/10 6:26pm)Report
Physicians use cadavers during medical education training, why can’t vets?
vetstudent
(03/15/10 7:30pm)Report
In response to the argument that human medicine uses cadavers: human physicians are not competent surgeons when they graduate, nor are they expected to be. However, this is the case in veterinary medicine; even general practioners perform a variety of surgical procedures with no additional training beyond vet school. Many human doctors will never perform surgery, and those who do must go through internships and residencies where they have much assistance and supervision in their first surgeries.
CVM Class of 2014
(03/15/10 9:51pm)Report
Ok let me throw this out there. Yes a heart is a heart, if it is beating or not. But to practice on a live animal is much more beneficial than a cadaver since the muscle tone, bleeding, ect. For a vet to practice on a cadaver would be similar for an artist to practice with blue finger paint. Yes they both use paint but one just smears paint and the other needs to take in brush texture, color mixing, lighting, shadowing ect.
These surgeries were terminal surgeries. They allowed the student the opportunity to learn how to perform the operation in real life conditions without the real life consequences. If a mistake was made it did not affect the animal since they were euthanized anyway. You must demonstrate competance on these types of surgeries before you allowed to touch peoples pets.
Yes human medicine does not do this. I’m pretty sure if the COM or CHM performed terminal surgeries there would be a few more heated debates here.
As a vet student this fall I will be working to get this grave injustice fixed.
Re CVM 2014 Student
(03/16/10 1:54am)Report
grave injustice? The majority of Vet schools no longer do terminal surgeries because they require the suffering and death of healthy animals, that you are supposed to help as a vet? Are you insane?
Why would you want to kill an animal when there are alternatives???
If you want to work with live dogs, do shelter medicine or shadow in the MSU vet hospital, don’t ship dogs in from a biomedical class A dealer, to kill it in a pointless surgery!
Zach
(03/17/10 4:12pm)Report
“I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. Your dog did not survive the surgery because he bled out through a nicked artery. You see, my cadaver dog didn’t have any blood pressure, so I never got to experience internal bleeding and practice cauterization before.
Also, I mangled his organs pretty badly. Because again, my cadaver didn’t bleed when I practiced, so mistakes weren’t as obvious.”
@MaximumBob & everyone!
(03/17/10 4:45pm)Report
I second MaximumBob’s statement! Do I heard 3rd’s, 4th’s, 5th’s and so on?
Do I hear^
(03/17/10 4:46pm)Report
oops:)
liv4k9s
(03/18/10 11:53am)Report
This article really got me thinking…why can’t the vet students use live animals from the shelters that are going to be put down anyway because they aren’t able to be placed in homes? I definitely see the benefits on using live animals to do surgeries. I don’t know too many people willing to volunteer their pets so that the students can learn. But I don’t quite understand the reasoning behind buying animals from breeders when there are so many being euthanized because they can’t placed with loving families. Lots of things to think about, that’s for sure.