As someone who has worked in past years in laboratories using live
anesthetized animals (dogs, pigs and rats) so that surgeons can
practice before performing surgeries (transplants) on humans, I wonder
if we would be willing to be the patients of someone who has never used
a scalpel before on living creature? Pigs are the closest to us in size
and shape if someone needs to practice doing a heart transplant or a
bypass.

The animals used for research/teaching purposes have to be treated in
the lab with anesthetics, analgesics (if they are observed after a
transplant surgery) given good clean food, clean cages, and handled
humanely daily and given all the care necessary. Otherwise the
surgeries/studies go badly because of infections or poor health.

Ferrets are experimented on in attempts to find a vaccine for H5N1 (for
us), and die or are euthanized, and are used as models for finding
treatments for other diseases we humans get (and they get) We humans
should be willing to die of our diseases, but somehow we decide we will
use any means to stay alive.

I'm more horrified at the poor bears in China who (whilst conscious and
alive) are impaled with a hollow steel stick so that the bile can be
removed/drained from their gallbladders twice daily. People who are
squeamish/sensitive should not click on the link

<http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/issues_facing_wildlife/wildlife_trade/the_unbearable_trade_in_bear_parts_and_bile/>

At least the pigs at Johns Hopkins are in a surgical suite anesthetized
and unconscious. Pigs are often treated poorly/inhumanely in the US in
farms prior to slaughter, just google pigs and cruelty. Glad I'm a
vegetarian.

Any of us signing up to be volunteer experimental subjects at Johns
Hopkins so that new surgeons can practice doing heart transplants,
kidney transplants, or quadruple bypasses if they cannot use pigs?

Meryl

[Posted in FML 5907]