Superior Non-Animal Training Methods

"Canadian federal animal welfare guidelines require that alternatives to animal use be used whenever available, and the (Department of National Defence) is continuing to violate these provisions since superior non-animal methods are widely available and in use around the world instead of crude animal labs.

"In addition to the surgical trauma course in Canada, some trainees are also sent to (DRDC Suffield in southern Alberta) to take part in a 'live agent training' course in which pigs are exposed to nerve agents like sarin and mustard gas. 

"The animals suffer seizures, irregular heartbeats, difficulty breathing, bleeding and possibly even death."  Justin Goodman, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

PETA has acquired a reputation as a sometimes-violent, always controversial, adamantly-dedicated animal rights group whose methods of countering animal abuse strikes many within the public as difficult to accept.  Their ongoing campaigns in defence of animal rights have made them many enemies and there are countless skeptics about how useful their confrontational tactics really are.  But they do get headlines, and plenty of publicity.

A report recently published in the journal Military Medicine outlines that there are six of twenty-eight NATO countries which have never moved away from the use of live animals - mostly pigs and goats - in the training protocols of battlefield doctors.  At a time when "superior non-animal training methods are widely available", according to one of the study's co-authors.

"Growing public concern for animal welfare, advances in computerized medical simulation technology, educational considerations and economic barriers have drawn a critical eye to animal use in military medical training", states a study by Shalin Gala and Justin Goodman from PETA, and Maj. Michael Murphy, from the Indiana University School of Medicine, along with Marion Balsam, former commander of Virginia's Naval Medical Centre Portsmouth.

Canada, the United States, Norway, Denmark, Poland and Britain continue to train trauma surgeons in the treatment of "penetrating injuries, gunshot wounds and amputation hemorrhaging", along with injuries suffered as a result of exposure to chemical agents, according to the report.  Which concludes that "further scrutiny is needed by military leadership and civilian policy-makers to determine what opportunities exist to replace animal use with other methods."

An unidentified official from the Canadian Department of National Defence had this to say: "I can confirm that as a member of the Canadian Council on Animal Care which establishes the national norms on the use of vertebrates in research, teaching and testing, DND does, when no other scientifically valid alternative exists, use animals in defence research/training activities."

Isn't it past time to stop?  There are more than enough sophisticated computer-enhanced models capable of producing very similar data to that acquired with the use of live animals, exposing them to tortuous methods of experimentation, causing pain and death.  Surely advanced societies invested in responsible management of research and health care are capable of better than this?