At the Physicians Committee, our efforts to end the use of animals in medical training are a big part of who we are. Currently, we are working to ensure that areas of advanced medical training—including emergency medicine residencies, Advanced Trauma Life Support courses, pediatrics residencies, and paramedic training programs—exclusively use human-relevant methods like simulators. 

You often see—and participate in—our demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns to get institutions to stop using animals. But there’s also a lot of activity going on behind the scenes of each campaign. We survey institutions to determine which are using animals and which are not, file requests using state and federal public records laws, review and summarize the stacks of documents we obtain from those requests, and diligently amass information regarding human-relevant training methods.  

Before we ever launch a public campaign, we write to faculty members and administrators at the medical center that is using animals. Sometimes they review this information and replace animals, and we commend them. 

But it’s usually not that easy. In those cases, we share the institutions’ practices with the public and media. Without fail, we have seen this approach succeed. But sometimes success comes slowly.

Consider Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, Md. In 2004, we learned that the university was once again using live pigs to teach surgical skills to medical students. After urging JHU to halt the practice, we learned in 2012 that it had reduced the number of animals used each year.

We kept the pressure on, holding physician-led demonstrations, posting local advertisements, and eventually delivering over 80,000 petitions from concerned citizens across the nation.

The beginning of the end came in January 2016, when Maryland Delegate Shane Robinson introduced a bill that would outlaw the use of animals for medical student training in the state. Four months later, Johns Hopkins announced it was ending its animal lab. But our work continues outside of medical student training.

Laval University in Quebec, Canada, is the only pediatrics residency program in Canada and the United States known to use animals—220 other facilities use only human-relevant training methods. 

When the Physicians Committee launched its public campaign against Laval in 2012, we revealed to the public that residents practice procedures on live piglets, which included making an incision between the animal’s ribs and inserting tubes and needles into the chest cavity, abdominal cavity, and under the breastbone to drain fluid from the sac surrounding the heart. The piglets are then killed before a surgical airway is performed. 

Recently, we obtained public records which revealed that Laval had made some changes to its animal use protocol, removing certain procedures because “animals are irrelevant…and considered to be non-representative of the human model.” In addition, the university’s Animal Care Committee only approved the protocol for two years—as opposed to three—“given the possible advances in artificial simulators.”

Based on these new findings, we filed a petition with the Quebec Ministers of Higher Education and Health and Social Services in April 2017, asking them to ensure that public funds are no longer wasted by Laval. We’re awaiting the outcome of the complaint.

In Minneapolis, our effort to end Hennepin County Medical Center’s (HCMC) animal use is also making progress. At HCMC, emergency medicine residents and other participants are instructed to practice over 20 procedures on live sheep and rabbits. 

In April 2016, we launched our public campaign against HCMC. Shortly thereafter, HCMC reduced the number of animals it uses by 100 each year. Just last month, the Star Tribune reported that “hospital officials said in a statement that they plan to eliminate the use of animals in its medical education program … HCMC said it is developing and testing new simulation technology that would replace the use of animals.” 

We await further developments from Laval and Hennepin. In the meantime, we’ll keep the pressure on them—and similar programs—by demanding that they provide the most educationally and ethically sound training available for future doctors and their patients.

If you would like to help us make certain that medical training is humane and exclusively human-relevant, please take action to support our active campaigns.

From the back of a napkin to reality: The Physicians Committee’s Charu Chandrasekera is set to lead the first Canadian center for the research and validation of alternative methods.

Millions of animals are used each year for studies of fundamental biology and disease, drug development, and toxicity testing. Despite decades of extensive research—often in animals—we still do not fully understand human biology and disease mechanisms. Fully 96 percent of drugs tested to be safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials. Therefore, there is an urgent need to transition from animal testing to humane and human-relevant methods to advance human medicine.

Many countries across the globe have already established nonanimal alternatives research and testing centers, and finally Canada joins them. Last week the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, announced that it has established the first Canadian center dedicated exclusively to human-centered biomedical research and testing, the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) and its subsidiary, the Canadian Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (CCVAM).

The University of Windsor is a comprehensive academic institution located on the Canadian border, across the river from Detroit, Mich. Since 1857, the University has been a progressive and inclusive community that comes together to study, to learn, to teach, and to serve. It places high priority on creativity and collaboration, and respect for ethical social values. CCAAM will contribute to that legacy.

The vision of CCAAM is the replacement of animals in Canadian biomedical research, education, and regulatory testing through 21st century science, innovation, and ethics. CCAAM/CCVAM will develop, validate, adopt, and promote alternatives in Canada through extensive research, academic, and regulatory initiatives in partnership with national and international academic, industry, government, and public sectors, including Health Canada and Environment Canada.

CCAAM plans to establish a state-of-the-art research infrastructure to enable fully humanized research and testing using only human biomaterials and human-based methods. Through in-house, external, and multicenter collaborative efforts, CCAAM will develop research initiatives to study fundamental human biology in health and disease.

CCAAM will develop unique first-in-its-class undergraduate and graduate academic programs in animal replacement science to educate the next generation of scientists, ethicists, and policymakers.

Through these various initiatives at CCAAM/CCVAM, Canada will officially join the global alternatives community and contribute to this field in a uniquely Canadian way.

The Physicians Committee plans to collaborate with CCAAM closely on many fronts to replace the use of animals in research, education, and toxicity testing. The Physicians Committee’s vice president of research policy, Kristie Sullivan, M.P.H., and director of research advocacy, Ryan Merkley, will serve on CCAAM’s advisory council.