Medical Schools End Vivisection

The Pentagon's own medical school, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, has ended the use of live animals to train medical students. The announcement came last month after a decade long lobbying effort by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The military medical school made headlines in the 1980s when it suggested shooting beagles to train students in emergency treatment. Public outcry against the abuse derailed the proposal, but the school continued to use animals for training purposes. Students protested to PCRM, but because of their military obligations could do little else to end the practice. Congressional leaders wrote to the school administrators and asked that they find alternatives to animal vivisection without success. The school operated three animal labs according to a 2007 FOIA request. The Medical College of Wisconsin also announced this June that it had ended live animal use in its training program in favor of human based instruction, but four institutions still use live animals: the University of Mississippi, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, John Hopkins University and OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY.