Viewpoints
Veterinary Student Comments about Educational Memorials
Veterinarian Endorsement of Educational Memorials


VETERINARY STUDENT COMMENTS ABOUT EDUCATIONAL MEMORIALS

Tufts University, School of Veterinary Medicine
During the formative stages of Tufts University's Client Donation Program, half of the anatomy class dissected donated animals, while the other half dissected embalmed dogs from commercial sources due to inadequate numbers of donor dogs. The following are some of the written comments from the class. ¹

"My group did have a donor dog and I felt much better about the circumstances leading up to our dissection of the dog. I think this program is a great idea and is true to many of the commitments of veterinary medicine to better the lives of animals (not take them for our own purposes when there is an alternative)."

"As aspiring veterinarians, I think it is critically important that veterinary schools lead the way in promoting progressive thinking about the ethical issues involved in use of animals, particularly lab-bred or otherwise healthy ones- for educational purposes. Awareness of the issues surrounding the controversy should absolutely be a part of veterinary education. I am grateful that Tufts recognizes the importance of this awareness and for its support of this notion via the donor animal program."

"We are not going to see perfect purpose-bred dogs in practice. The donor dogs were of all ages and breeds and there were plenty of dogs to compare for normal anatomy."

"The (donor) program seemed to be implemented rather easily here despite the split campuses. Considering most normal vet schools have their anatomy labs on the premises of their hospitals, it would be a very easy, inexpensive and ethically sound program for other schools to adopt."

"When I started vet school, I was relieved that Tufts started a donor animal program. Donor dogs come in different shapes, sizes and breeds allowing the students to have a more realistic experience of what we will encounter in the clinics. There is no reason to kill healthy animals when clients will donate their loved pets for our benefit."

"Our dog was a donor dog and was a very good specimen. But even if he had not been, I would much prefer to use a donor dog due to ethical objections to breeding and euthanizing healthy dogs for dissection purposes."

"Our dog was a donor dog and was just as good a specimen (anatomically) as the non-donor dogs (purchased from Nasco). I was more comfortable dissecting a dog that had not been purpose-bred and the fact that a family donated their pet commanded a greater respect during lab."

University of Florida, School of Veterinary Medicine
"As a freshman veterinary student with a conscientious objection to the slaughter of healthy animals for the sole purpose of education, I did not want to dissect a purpose-bred pony for a required large animal anatomy class. I found it very difficult to convince a committee of veterinary faculty and clinicians that using a client-donated animal was a perfectly acceptable alternative. After being given the choice either to transfer or take a leave of absence I knew more extreme measures would have to be taken for the school to take my objections seriously. I weighed several options which included contacting the media and finally chose to get a lawyer. Within several days after receiving a letter from my lawyer I got word from the college that a client was willing to donate his horse and that it could be used for the large animal anatomy class.

In an anatomy room filled with purpose bred ponies, my client-donated horse stood out like a sore thumb. I told myself I could live with the ridicule and strange stares for three more years of vet school, it's the guilty conscience that I could not bear for the rest of my life.

In the fall of this year the sophomores (myself included) will use cadavers to practice spinal taps and other procedures. I am hopeful University of Florida will approve a Body Donation Program so the veterinary students can learn these procedures on client-donated cadavers. An ethical source of cadavers for anatomy and other laboratories is a crucial element of modern veterinary medical education."³⁵

Kari Pohost
Class of 2003

University of Illinois, College of Veterinary Medicine
"With all the discussion and research into computer programs and anatomic models to replace the anatomy cadavers in first-year veterinary curricula, I'm perplexed by the rarely-mentioned alternative to dissection: a better source of the dissected animals. I've seen the computer programs, and some of them are excellent, and I believe they can completely replace dissection at the high school level. However, I feel the benefits from dissection and prosection of cadavers at the veterinary school level is only supplemented by the computer programs, and cannot be replaced by them. It's about time the medical school concept of donated bodies to teach anatomy and surgical psychomotor skills was applied to veterinary medical education."

Linnaea Stull
Class of 2002

University of Missouri, College of Veterinary Medicine
"Clearly, veterinary schools must teach anatomy, and cadavers are the ideal anatomy teaching tool. However, sacrificing healthy animals for dissection is morally reprehensible. The murky background of class B dealers who supply these animals compounds the wrongness of using commercial source specimens.

Body Donation Programs are more than simply an ethically acceptable alternative--they are a moral absolute. From the sorrow of a pet's death, they offer a sense of purpose of grieving pet owners. Clients who choose to participate are comforted by the idea of their pet's final contribution. Vet students, too, benefit from these programs. Donated bodies have associated histories and assorted lesions that add a valuable dimension to anatomy. What better introduction to pathology than gross specimens with vivid histories and multiple examples of normal for comparison.

Needless death of animals is the wrong introduction to veterinary medicine. We are entering a caring profession, and compassion is a good thing."³⁶

Betsy Arthur
Class of 2003

Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine
"My objection to the current use of pound animals is that it sends students a mixed message -- specifically, that it's OK to kill healthy animals when it suits our purposes and when those animals do not have a personal advocate, a.k.a. an owner with a checkbook; otherwise, we should dedicate our professional lives to enhancing and preserving the lives of animals. This two-faced approach to veterinary education is reprehensible. Medical schools do not kill humans for educational purposes. If the veterinary profession wants to enhance its prestige and standing within the medical community, it should act in a more professional manner. Patients are patients, and teaching commodities are teaching commodities. It would behoove the administrations of our nation's vet schools to start making the distinction."³⁷

Anonymous veterinary student

"The learning of surgical principles at the VMRCVM currently involves the sacrifice of many animals during the third year of the curriculum. Previously, the only alternative available to students was the use of cadavers of dogs who were healthy, euthanized only because they were homeless…Many students were concerned about the source of these cadavers, as well as the mechanism of euthanasia of these animals. Students proposed obtaining cadavers of animals who died or were euthanized for medical reasons… It is our hope that the VMRCVM will institute a client donation program to obtain cadavers from our veterinary teaching hospital who died or were euthanized for medical reasons. This would further prevent the unnecessary death of homeless animals in veterinary education." ³⁸

Lori Blankenship
Class of 2000

Norwegian College of Veterinary Medicine
"I am a 3rd year veterinary student at the Veterinary College in Norway. As a veterinary student I have to have knowledge about how animals look internally, and one way of doing that is, of course, dissection. Animals are killed for dissections, but I don't think it has to be that way. You can also use naturally-dead animals, as I did in my studies.

One solution is to call animal owners and ask them if they can give you their animals that die naturally. In that way I got horses, cows and sheep for dissection. And it is a very good solution for veterinary colleges who want to use naturally dead animals to link up with veterinary clinics, both for small and large animals.

And so I brought the animals to the pathology lab - it is important that it died from a non-infectious disease or an injury and then I did the dissections on the ethically-sourced animals.

The use of animals for dissection is actually the most common harmful use of animals in education. Both in biology and veterinary medicine, and also in many other fields, they use killed animals for dissections, so I think that starting to use naturally-dead animals is really one of the most important ways of decreasing the number of animals killed for education." ³⁹

Siri Martinsen
Class of 2001


University of Sydney, Australia
"A program where clients donate the bodies of their deceased animals is the only way to ensure an ongoing and ethical means of obtaining cadavers for anatomy and surgery classes. Other sources make use of animal surplus to society or industries' needs, a situation we as veterinarians should be doing our best to end. Using the bodies of healthy dogs that are surplus to society's needs does nothing to alleviate the huge over-population problem and in a way condones it."

"I consider the use of dogs surplus to the greyhound racing industry an unethical and unjustifiable source. Any move by universities to make use of their disgraceful waste of life is seen as not only taking some of the burden off these breeders but also as promoting the industry." ⁴⁰

Lucy Fish
Class of 2001

Murdoch University, Australia
"Here in Australia we're on the verge of bringing in Australia's first "alternative" veterinary surgical program. I and a classmate are the first veterinary students in Western Australia allowed to learn surgery without killing healthy animals in the process. We've been allowed to learn partly by sterilizing homeless cats and dogs from shelters instead. It would significantly increase our confidence if we were able to practice these and other surgical procedures on ethically-sourced cadavers prior to performing them on real patients.

It's very important that veterinary schools end their reliance on pounds and disreputable animal dealers to provide animal cadavers for psychomotor (surgery) and anatomy labs. It is perfectly accepted that we, as humans, decide upon obtaining our driver's license whether or not to donate bodies in the tragic event of our death; it should be just as natural to do the same with our companion animals. An educational memorial program at our teaching hospital would provide ethically-sourced cadavers for veterinary students, such as myself, wishing to obtain their education without purposeful loss of animal life." ⁴¹

Andrew Knight
Class of 2001

 

VETERINARIAN ENDORSEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL MEMORIALS:

"We believe the donor animal program is a workable program that can be implemented by veterinary schools. The donor animal program is cost-effective and presents a number of advantages over acquiring animals via the traditional route. These advantages include providing students with a valuable education that emphasizes the clinical aspects of anatomy and the ability to integrate the ethical values of veterinary medicine beginning in the first year of veterinary education."¹

A.M. Kumar, Ph.D, MVSc.
Donald Brown, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Gary Patronek, V.M.D., Ph.D.

"The College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences will rely solely on a Willed Body Program for all cadaver accessions used in the curriculum. All animals will have died or been euthanized due to serious illness or injury. Animals without guardianship that are killed secondary to the 'over-population problem' will not be included in our Willed Body Program.

We are at a point in human civilization where we need to ethically account for our actions. Human medical training has relied on and benefited from Willed Body donations for eons. We as veterinarians must show the same respect for our patient populations. We must no longer kill or rely on suspect means to fill our cadaver labs."³⁰

Lara Marie Rasmussen, D.V.M., D.A.C.V.S.
Assistant Professor College of Veterinary Medicine
Western University of Health Sciences

"We train doctors of human medicine without purposefully harming or killing human beings, so we can apply the same principles in the training of doctors of veterinary medicine. It is not educationally necessary to harm and kill animals in veterinary medicine. Training veterinary students without harming animals has been done in many veterinary medical schools across the country for those students who are conscientious objectors. Furthermore, it has been shown repeatedly that these students' skills as veterinarians are on par with those of students who were trained in the traditional animal-consumptive manner. The Client Donation Program, which is similar to human body will programs, is an important part of the process of making veterinary medical education sound, both pedagogically and ethically."⁴²

Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D.
Professor of Ophthalmology
University of California School of Veterinary Medicine


"I graduated from Ohio State University in June 1995. Before I started vet school, I had inquired about obtaining anatomy cadavers that had died of natural causes or were euthanized for medical reasons. The important thing for me at that point of my career was that the animal did not die for the sake of my education. Ohio State (back in 1991) then threatened to withdraw my admissions if I was not willing to participant in the anatomy laboratories as is. I obtained legal counsel. This is when Ohio State backed down and responded to my request. So, I was able to reach my goal of not using any animal that had died for the sake of my education but some would not consider all the sources "ethical."

As a practicing veterinarian, I cannot tell you how many people would receive great comfort in donating their beloved pet's body for the betterment of veterinary medicine --- and to save the life of a healthy animal. I am looking forward to working with the University of Wisconsin on helping them create their own Body Willed Donation Program. I know that many people in this area, caretakers and veterinarians alike, will welcome the opportunity to participate." ⁴³

Susan B. Krebsbach, D.V.M.
Madison, Wisconsin

"I believe that my veterinary education did not emphasize enough, the veterinarian's role in addressing pet overpopulation as a primary cause of companion animal mortality each year.

The concept of euthanasia of "surplus animals" in our communities has become commonplace. By allowing such "surplus animals" to be used in a veterinary teaching environment, we reinforce the belief that the pet overpopulation problem is nothing but an inexhaustible supply of animals available for veterinary education. Sadly, this practice desensitizes veterinary students to the thousands of animals that are euthanized each year in animal shelters around the country.

As a veterinarian who's spent the past four years practicing quality shelter medicine at The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I applaud the Body Donation concept. Students are still taught the necessary skills to become competent veterinarians, but they are not desensitized to the pet overpopulation problem."⁴⁴

Ilana Strubel, D.V.M.
Pacifica, Calif.

"Since the major role of veterinary medicine has dramatically shifted from one that helps farmers with their animal property for production means to one that helps families with their beloved pets, teaching methods must evolve with this in mind. Most of today's' students did not grow up on farms. They grew up loving companion animals and are now seeking the veterinary profession due to their deep respect and devotion for animal life and well-being. These beliefs must be honored and promoted since compassionate care is essential for companion animal medicine.

Respect and compassion for animal life and welfare is greatly undermined when homeless animals are exploited and even killed, out of sheer convenience, for our veterinary training. What message are students getting when an animal loses its rights for life and welfare simply by being a victim of overpopulation?

As a veterinarian who sought the ethical treatment and use of animals in my training, the source of animals for anatomy and surgical courses were of great importance to me. Owners of terminally ill pets often ask to donate their companion's remains for science, in hopes that their pet's death could in some way contribute to the welfare of future animals. This allows for a very meaningful and abundant source of cadavers for veterinary training, which still respects the life of the beings we are learning to help.

Just as human medical training does not "practice" on homeless or disabled people before venturing out on true patients, a thought considered utterly inhumane, neither should we on misfortuned subjects.

Veterinary medicine has long been delinquent in dealing with the pet overpopulation issue. Lets end pet overpopulation once and for all, through revolutionary spay and neuter programs and breeding bans, lets stop callously taking advantage of this great misfortune of companion animals and teach compassion and respect for the rights of our fellow animals. It is time we live up to our profession's great potential as healers and not killers of our patients."⁴⁵

Jennifer Kissinger, D.V.M.
Berkshire Cat Hospital Lenox, MA