New York Medical College to stop using live dogs

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New York Medical College to stop using live dogs

 

 

By LEAH RAE

THE JOURNAL NEWS

 

 

(Original publication: November 27, 2007)

VALHALLA - The newest class of students at New York Medical College will

study

the basics of cardiology without the traditional method: They won't be opening

the chest of a live dog and watching its heart beat.

Responding to appeals from humanitarian groups, the college said yesterday

that

it would end the practice normally used to teach 190 students in first-year

physiology

class. Echocardiography and simulators will replace the use of live dogs when

they

reach that phase of their course in early 2008.

The college attracted a mini-movement of opposition over the past two years as

the only medical school in New York that apparently still used animals.

Animal-rights

groups, neighborhood dog lovers and politicians joined the cause.

Bob Funck, who lives in Harrison, said he began fighting the policy after

hearing

about it from a student. " I give the folks at the college credit for making

a good, positive decision - for them and for the animals, " he said.

An organization called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is

fighting

the practice around the country. Just 11 medical schools still use live animals,

none of them in New York state, said Dr. John J. Pippin, a Dallas cardiologist

working

with the organization. He said technological tools have quickly become the

standard

in education.

Dr. Karl Adler, president of the college in Valhalla, said that last he had

heard,

about seven dogs were used annually in the lab. The animals were given

anesthesia

during the procedure and euthanized afterward, administrators have said.

" The reason why the dogs were used in the past is that the students could

actually see a beating heart, and understand the physiology of how the heart

works, "

Adler said. " It's the only internal organ where there's actually movement

that you can understand the physiology of. "

Animals were once a common study aid, he said. An internist, Adler remembers

learning

about treatment for seizures in a medical school lab with a number of seizing

dogs.

Technology has since provided alternative ways to display and simulate the

heart's

function. With a portable echocardiograph machine, the class will be able to

attach

an electrode to a student's chest and watch the heart's activity on a video

monitor. Simulators with computerized models will be able to mimic things like

cardiac

arrest or the effect of a drug.

New York Medical College's curriculum committee was asked in July to study

alternatives to the animal lab, and reported back to the dean that the

alternatives

were just as effective in instruction. Adler had no estimate on how much the

college

would spend on the technology.

" We're not teaching open-heart surgery. What we're teaching is first-year

medical students to understand how the heart works, " he said. " And we

think that the exposure using (echocardiography) and the simulators is

equivalent

now to using a live dog. "

Among the elected officials pressing against the practice was Assemblyman Adam

Bradley, who wrote to the college dean, Dr. Ralph O'Connell, this month.

Bradley called the procedure " unjustified and unnecessary. " He wrote

that the practice could not have been a great benefit to graduates, given that

students

were already allowed to opt out.

Typically, animals in a lab are anesthetized and given a breathing tube, and

students

open the chest, observe the heart and give drugs intravenously to watch the

effects,

said Pippin, the Dallas cardiologist. Modern simulators, in the form of humans,

replicate the process so well that students can become emotional when the device

simulates death.

The advantage: " You get to go back and learn and do it all over again and

be successful, as opposed to using a dog, where if you do make a mistake and the

dog dies, you're done, " he said. " The traditional notion that, 'Well,

we're going to use an animal to show you this 'cause we don't know how

else to do it' - that doesn't hold water anymore, because there are much

better ways to do it. "

 

Reach Leah Rae at lrae or 914-694-3526.

 

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Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Confucius