Group Protests Use of Live Animals in Military Medical School Testing

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - A nonprofit group on Wednesday petitioned the head of the Army to end the use of live pigs and ferrets for surgical teaching and other instruction at the nation's military medical school, a practice the group says violates military regulations.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine petitioned Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, who is charged with implementation of the Defense Department regulation on use of laboratory animals, to end the use of live animals at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

USUHS is a medical school that graduates about 160 military and public health doctors per year. Currently, live animals are used for surgical and other instruction in San Antonio and at the school's main site in Bethesda, Md.

A military regulation, last updated in 2005, dictates that alternative methods to the use of animals be considered and used if they produce scientifically valid or equivalent results.

Dr. John Pippin, PCRM's senior medical and research adviser, said pigs are being used for surgical instruction and ferrets are being used to teach future pediatricians to intubate infants.

Such uses for live animals are no longer necessary because simulators offer equal or better instruction, he said. Only eight of the nation's 126 medical schools still use live animals, a practice that has been increasingly phased out with the growth in high-tech alternatives, he said.

USUHS spokeswoman Carol Scheman said the use of live animals is being reviewed, as is done every four years. But in the past students have found the live animal work extremely useful, she said.

"We use adjunct methods whenever reasonable," she said.

Marion Balsam, a retired Navy rear admiral and pediatrician, said she tried to persuade the dean of USUHS to replace the use of live animals with simulators, many of which the military already owns and uses.

"Even if there were no (military) directive, it's a matter of common sense and human decency" to avoid causing needless suffering, said Balsam, who concedes she thought little of the issue when she was still in the military and occasionally instructing USUHS courses.

The medical school instruction at USUHS is similar to that of civilian institutions, but it includes an emphasis on catastrophic medicine to equip doctors to work in harsh conditions.

Scheman said the school looks for the best ways to instruct those future doctors and the use of animals has been part of that instruction.

"We need to turn out the best prepared medical professionals in the world," she said.

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By MICHELLE ROBERTS

Associated Press Writer

On the Net:

Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences:

http://www.usuhs.mil/

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine:

http://www.pcrm.org/

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