University of Michigan Med School Continues Using Dogs for Student Training

There's an interesting opinion piece in today's Detroit Free Press that you might want to check out, titled Medicine and Morals at U-M, and subtitled U-M med school should stop traumatizing dogs. It's written by Ann Arbor physician and University of Michigan School of Medicine clinical professor Edward J. Linker, M.D. (a specialist in Holistic Primary Care).

Dr. Linker says that he is "disappointed that U-M refuses to modernize its Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course by replacing live animals with high-tech simulators that accurately replicate human anatomy.

Instead, U-M continues to use and kill dogs from Michigan animal shelters in a course designed to teach procedures to be performed on human patients."

He goes on to say, "It's crucial that all doctors, especially trauma training participants, be trained with the best tools and methods available and have a complete understanding of the human body. That's why the vast majority of ATLS courses across the country, including all other ATLS courses in Michigan, have stopped using live animals as training tools. Participants in these other courses now use cutting-edge human patient simulation technology to learn how to treat the effects of trauma in humans.

But in U-M's trauma training course, students continue to use anesthetized dogs. At the end of the course, the dogs are killed.

Well, since respected technology exists, why is University of Michigan Med School still choosing to use dogs? Especially when that technology replicates the human body?

Let's call for U-M to come around in its thinking and join the 21st century already.