Here is an interesting discussion by veterinary students about the ethics of training by doing terminal surgeries on dogs and about using shelter dogs for practice vs dogs bred for research.
Some of the students are very sensitive and some are colder and very resentful about losing access to shelter dogs. Bred dogs cost about $1,000 and the expense seems unnecessary to those students. Also some students find it more emotionally disturbing to kill a dog that is bred for that purpose, rather than a shelter dog that is going to be put to sleep anyway.
Some think that animal rights issues are why they have lost access to shelter pets as learning aids. However, as a human being, I feel I have a right to know that my dog will not be used in research or practice procedures in schools should something happen to me. I feel that I have a human right to have peace of mind about this. No matter what precautions I take, I won't have absolute control over what happens to my dog if I die or become incapacitated. Also, it is a fact that dogs, (and cats), have been stolen and sold by dealers to labs and vet schools. Hopefully in the days of microchipping this practice is less common that it was.
When I was interviewing for a job with a teaching hospital in the past, I was shown a kennel where former pet dogs were kept prior to being used in heart surgery research. I saw a dog recovering from open heart surgery, too. The dogs in the kennel were terrified and begged and yelped at me desperately as I walked past them. They were in small cages as you would see in a vet's back room, stacked one on too of each other.
The cages were clean and new but the dogs were suffering from fear and anxiety. I don't know how long they were maintained like that but there were about 20 dogs in the kennel so I imagine that they would be resident there for days or weeks at a time prior to being experimented upon.
No matter what happens to me, this is not how I would want the last days of my dog's life to end. If others want to donate their pets to research, that is their choice.
Some of the veterinary students think more along the lines of the way I do. They would prefer to train the way that medical students do...by observation and supervised training doing medically needed procedures upon dogs in need healing.
I was just reading a local vet's web site and I noted that he questioned the use of healthy animals for certain surgical procedures in vet schools also.
It is interesting to read the comments in this link, anyway.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=487097&highlight=terminal+surgeries
Some of the students are very sensitive and some are colder and very resentful about losing access to shelter dogs. Bred dogs cost about $1,000 and the expense seems unnecessary to those students. Also some students find it more emotionally disturbing to kill a dog that is bred for that purpose, rather than a shelter dog that is going to be put to sleep anyway.
Some think that animal rights issues are why they have lost access to shelter pets as learning aids. However, as a human being, I feel I have a right to know that my dog will not be used in research or practice procedures in schools should something happen to me. I feel that I have a human right to have peace of mind about this. No matter what precautions I take, I won't have absolute control over what happens to my dog if I die or become incapacitated. Also, it is a fact that dogs, (and cats), have been stolen and sold by dealers to labs and vet schools. Hopefully in the days of microchipping this practice is less common that it was.
When I was interviewing for a job with a teaching hospital in the past, I was shown a kennel where former pet dogs were kept prior to being used in heart surgery research. I saw a dog recovering from open heart surgery, too. The dogs in the kennel were terrified and begged and yelped at me desperately as I walked past them. They were in small cages as you would see in a vet's back room, stacked one on too of each other.
The cages were clean and new but the dogs were suffering from fear and anxiety. I don't know how long they were maintained like that but there were about 20 dogs in the kennel so I imagine that they would be resident there for days or weeks at a time prior to being experimented upon.
No matter what happens to me, this is not how I would want the last days of my dog's life to end. If others want to donate their pets to research, that is their choice.
Some of the veterinary students think more along the lines of the way I do. They would prefer to train the way that medical students do...by observation and supervised training doing medically needed procedures upon dogs in need healing.
I was just reading a local vet's web site and I noted that he questioned the use of healthy animals for certain surgical procedures in vet schools also.
It is interesting to read the comments in this link, anyway.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=487097&highlight=terminal+surgeries
