PETA India has started a series of free continuing medical education (CME) workshops across India from January 16-20 for eliminating use of animals  in the experiments which will help professors, aspiring doctors and learners to adopt new simulation-based medical education.

Poorva Joshipura, chief functionary at PETA India said, “Animals like rats, mice, frogs, guinea pigs and sometimes rabbits are used commonly for practical training in pharmacology and physiology courses. But this is completely unnecessary.”  She further added, “In 2009, after hearing from PETA and medical experts and learning about the non-animal alternatives that are available for teaching pharmacology and physiology, the Medical Council of India (MCI) amended its MBBS regulations to allow medical schools to use alternatives to animals during classroom experiments. In light of MCI’s decision, we have decided to arrange free workshops at major medical schools across India to inform professors and administrators on how they can switch to a non-animal MBBS curriculum.”

Joshipura informed that for CME workshops, PETA India has invited medical academic experts from Harvard Medical School, University of Edinburgh and Mahatma Gandhi-Doerenkamp Centre to deliver presentations on non-animal teaching alternatives, demonstrating these models in an interactive setting, and provide ideas of how best to implement such alternatives in the MBBS curriculum.

With this workshop, PETA India wants professors, aspiring doctors and learners to adopt the simulation-based medical education with a patient simulator which is the best method of teaching as it has the ability to provide respiratory gas exchange, anaesthesia delivery, and patient monitoring with real physiological clinical monitors which is not possible with animals that are physiologically and anatomically different from humans. These humane training techniques can be used again and again until a skill is mastered while animals can only be used once. Joshipura stressed that research has repeatedly found that students who are forcibly trained on animals and do what they perceive to be ethically objectionable activities may suffer psychological trauma and that such trauma can severely hamper their ability to learn the intended course material.

According to the research conducted by PETA India, in the US, non-animal medical training curricula have already been adopted in 95 per cent of programmes and are 100 per cent in use in Canada and the UK. Institutions in these countries provide students with the latest training methods, including human-patient simulators, supervised clinical practice and interactive computer-aided teaching models. Non-animal training methods have repeatedly proved to be superior to those that use animals. It is high time for India to catch up if it wants to provide the best education to our country’s students.

The CME workshops is being held at various top medical colleges in India like St. John's Medical College, Bengaluru on January 16, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry on January 17, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi on January 19, and Christian Medical College, Ludhiana on January 20, to inform medical school professors about Computer Aided Learning methods and didactic non animal methods for teaching medicine. The workshop will feature lectures and interactive simulation demonstrations covering the modern, effective and economical non-animal training methods available that can completely replace animal use in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) curricula.