BOSTON, MA - Responding to requests for help from
veterinary students across the country, the New England Anti-Vivisection
Society (NEAVS) is making free information packets available on how to
oppose the killing of live animals for physiology and surgical training.
Currently, all of the 27 veterinary schools in America kill healthy
dogs, cats, or other animals for "educational" purposes. In Britain,
this practice has been outlawed.
The NEAVS packet contains sample letters to the editor,
lists of available computer models (including pig, cat, frog and
soon-to-be-available dog and horse), practice mannequins, and journal
articles and student quotations validating the superiority of
alternative surgical training. In addition, NEAVS is offering detailed
instructions on how vet students can work with veterinarians and no-kill
shelters to establish alternative surgical training experiences such as
spay/neuter surgeries.
"Since its founding in 1895, NEAVS has had a strong
commitment to educating future generations of veterinarians, physicians,
researchers and scientists," said NEAVS' President Theodora Capaldo, EdD,
a psychologist. "In working to end vivisection, it is imperative that
students be offered a new way of thinking and doing things. We must work
to change the mindset -- established early in one's professional
training -- that animals are disposable commodities."
Capaldo added, "Students, especially those in
professions engaged in vivisection, are the single most important
population that the anti-vivisection movement must educate and support.
The importance of organizations such as Association of Veterinarians for
Animal Rights cannot be overemphasized in achieving these changes. With
the impressive body of knowledge now available proving that alternatives
are educationally and scientifically superior to animal models, our
ethical argument is solidly based on scientific fact. The lessons of
compassion need never be sacrificed to promote learning."
Said Ann Stauble, NEAVS' Vet Ed Program Coordinator and
Research Specialist, "The argument that animals killed for surgical
training would be euthanized anyway is a poor one. The biggest killer of
dogs and cats in this country is not a disease -- it's euthanasia due to
over-population. Veterinarians and students should be fighting this
killer together, not using it as an excuse to justify unnecessary
cruelties and teach our future vets that animals are disposable."
Stauble noted, "In the NEAVS Vet Ed Program most of our
students perform early-age sterilizations. In addition to learning
surgical skills in a humane way, they're saving hundreds of animal
lives. Research shows that vet students can learn both physiology and
surgery through humane teaching just as well as students who participate
in terminal labs."
NEAVS has been working not only to end practices such as
terminal dog lab but, as importantly, to help shape a humane ethic in
the veterinarians of the future. This latest groundswell of student
sentiment against the abusive use of animals in veterinary education is
a clear call to veterinary schools across the country to stop the
killing, according to NEAVS.
To request free information packets, call NEAVS at
617-523-6020 x13;
email
[email protected] or visit the NEAVS Web site at
www.neavs.org.
Source: "Swain, April" <[email protected]>
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