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Sent again as a paste and attachment for those that need one or the other. Charlie Powell Answers to frequently asked questions about teaching animal care and use in Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine July 2002 Currently there is inaccurate and incomplete information circulating on the Internet about animal care and use in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine's teaching activities and we welcome the opportunity to address these concerns. WSU's College of Veterinary Medicine does use both live animals and cadaver animals purchased from animal shelters for teaching, and to a far lesser extent, research activities. · In the last year or so, a small number of animals purchased live from regional shelters entered the teaching colony and for a period of time were diverted to research projects. Research involved the following: · Six cats from the Spokane County shelter scheduled for euthanasia were diverted into an approved pharmacokinetic study and were all voluntarily adopted out by the researcher. · Twelve dogs were used in clinical anesthesia trials for the development of a safe and effective reversal agent for inhalation anesthesia. Despite a tremendous need, there is currently no such reversal agent in human or animal medicine nor is there any in vitro model available to accomplish this objective. All dogs have been recovered and the clinical trial protocol is completely approved. · Spokane County no longer provides live animals to WSU for teaching purposes. They do however continue to provide cadaver animals and take advantage of WSU's long-standing free spay and neuter service for shelter animals. · In recent years we have instituted a free spay and neuter service to shelter animals, thus making them more valuable for adoption and contributing to a solution to pet overpopulation. To date in 2002 alone, the WSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital has spayed or neutered and returned to the region's shelters more than 700 animals that otherwise would likely have been destroyed. Cost to the college has been in excess of $70,000. All "spay/neuter return" surgeries are performed by veterinary students under the supervision of clinical faculty as an additional means to help the students hone their surgical skills. Also, we even provide this free service to shelters that choose not to provide live animals or cadavers to our program. · Cadaver animals are purchased on the days when the local shelters are normally destroying animals in accordance with their established policies and procedures, not on demand from WSU. This college does not engage in pound seizure. The WSU College of Veterinary Medicine has no authority to acquire animals other than by purchase or donation. · The WSU veterinary college employs comprehensive efforts to ensure that "owned" animals are not mistakenly purchased. We scan for microchip identifiers, search for tattoos, and investigate any evidence of ownership found. This comes after equally concerted efforts by the shelters themselves to locate owners of animals they take in. WSU has returned a number of animals to their owners long after they would have been killed under normal shelter protocols. In addition, a small number of animals coming to WSU end up being adopted by veterinary students. · Since 1988, WSU College of Veterinary Medicine faculty has developed some of the most highly respected and proven alternatives to the use of live animals in any professional veterinary curriculum. For many years WSU led the nation in implementing these alternatives in its teaching activities. Our faculty has received international recognition for this humane effort. Our program has been featured as one of the best in the nation in cover articles published by the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights known as AVAR (Alternatives in Veterinary Medical Education, Issue 16, January 2001). Also, please see http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/academic/vent.html for a computer simulation of an anesthesia ventilator developed as an alternative to live animal use with funding from AVAR. · Thankfully, most of the nation's other veterinary colleges have now joined this humane effort, some by following our lead after consulting with us. Because of the success of this program and the educational advantages it provides, we no longer offer a separate alternative surgery track, per se. Alternatives in individual courses are still available to any WSU veterinary student at the same level as when the defined tracking system was in place. We have discontinued the alternative surgery summer course for students outside our program because of a lack of demand and limited faculty and staff resource time. Other components of the original alternative surgery track are now part of the regular curriculum taken by every student. As such, they are no longer regarded as "alternatives," but are part of an ever-advancing curriculum. · WSU combines extensive use of psychomotor skills exercises, models and computer simulations, and advanced multimedia resources, into a single, modern, effective veterinary education. With this fully approved curriculum any student who chooses to do so can graduate with an unrestricted Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree after learning surgical skills using only client-owned animals in need, or cadavers. · No WSU veterinary student is required to euthanize any animal for any required course in the curriculum. We do still offer single procedure, non-recovery terminal surgical exercises as electives only, meaning they are all voluntary and have been for several years. In the academic year 2001-02, 48 dogs were euthanized at the end of these elective courses. · No student is required to conduct biomedical research or product testing, live animal or otherwise, in order to graduate. Again, we pride ourselves in providing students with choices. · The WSU veterinary college students do perform pre-approved, so-called "multiple procedures" on purchased shelter animals in strict accordance with all laws, regulations, and policies of the federal government, Washington state, and the university. All multiple procedures employed in required courses involve approved non-invasive or minimally invasive techniques with a known outcome, not research or product testing. Such procedures include: · For anesthesia induction, monitoring, and recovery: placement of IV catheters and intubation; · For small animal reproduction: palpation, ultrasound examination, semen collection, and a vaginal swab; and · For a physiology exercise: animals are sedated and monitored and less than 6 milliliters of blood amounting is also drawn. · Are animals used in teaching at WSU's veterinary college given "mind-altering drugs?" If one considers anesthetic drugs used routinely in veterinary medicine, the answer is yes. This is because we train veterinary students in the proper and safe use of these commonly used drugs just as human medical students are trained how to use anesthetics with people. All anesthetic drugs are by definition "mind-altering drugs" because when used properly in the clinical setting they induce unconsciousness. The same can probably be said for pain medications that also promote sleep in animals and humans. The issue here is not the drugs themselves, but the use of a term that relates back to hallucinogenic drug abuse originating in the 1960s. "Mind-altering drugs," is a reactionary term referred by most lay people to drugs like PCP, LSD, mescaline derivatives, and others. To brand the clinical use of common anesthetic drugs with this term is an attempt to manipulate people who have sincere concerns for animals and at the same time do not understand medical terminology. The WSU College of Veterinary Medicine does not provide medications to animals unnecessarily and we do not conduct product testing with chemicals or cosmetics. As with all medical colleges, human and animal, WSU does participate in the clinical trials of new drugs as part of the legal approval process. The college does anesthetize healthy animals and recover them safely for anesthesia training. In addition, sedation is used where necessary to avoid pain and promote humane handling of animals in approved and reviewed teaching exercises that may be associated with discomfort. · The WSU veterinary college also provides "alternative cadavers" for the surgery classes of students who have ethical objections to using animals killed because they were unwanted or abandoned. With "alternative cadavers", the animal has been euthanized or has died as a result of illness, injury, or severe behavioral problems rendering them unadoptable. People relinquishing these animals to the Spokane shelter must indicate in writing on the release form whether or not they will allow their animal's body to be used by WSU for educational purposes in the event euthanasia is carried out. · Acknowledging that even current "alternative cadavers" are unacceptable to an extremely small minority of veterinary students (< 1 percent), the WSU veterinary college is currently investigating a proposed "willed cadaver" program that will meet these students' ethical concerns. Such cadavers would be willed to the college by their owners and would not have been destroyed for overpopulation or behavioral problems. · Students are required to use cadavers (including alternative cadavers) in anatomic studies. The source of these cadavers is local animal control agencies. The majority of live shelter animals purchased by WSU are euthanized on arrival to facilitate embalming for anatomic study, which is a critical part of the veterinary education process just as human cadavers are to medical education. In addition to embalmed cadaver dissections, our world-renowned anatomy program utilizes the finest in preservation techniques, including freeze drying, to produce specimens that endure and are so useful that, in fact, fewer animals must be killed to study and learn veterinary anatomy. There is no complete, whole body anatomic model that has been developed for either humans or animals in any professional medical education program. · The 103 year-old WSU College of Veterinary Medicine currently maintains the highest level of accreditation that can be attained by a veterinary teaching institution in North America, in recognition for the quality of our educational, research, and service programs. It is fully accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education (AVMA-COE) as well as the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) and the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). · The WSU College of Veterinary Medicine takes its obligations to animals, society, and our students very seriously. Explicit in our mission are the goals of promoting animal health and alleviating animal suffering. To this end we have investigated, installed, and promoted alternatives to the use of live animals. As a result, we have dramatically reduced both the number of animals and the number of potentially painful procedures used in our curriculum. We continue to explore humane, efficacious, and cost-effective alternatives and welcome any reasoned attempt to provide us with information to further this objective. Sincerely, Warwick M. Bayly, B.V.Sc., M.S., Ph.D. Dean, College of Veterinary Medicine Washington State University Pullman, WA 99164-7010 wmb@vetmed.wsu.edu
2002 ANIMAL CARE AND USE FINAL SHORT.doc