PETA INDIA AND CHRISTIAN MEDICAL COLLEGE TO HOLD WORKSHOP ON MODERN MEDICAL SIMULATORS

Workshop Will Demonstrate to Educators Non-Animal Methods of Teaching Physiology and Pharmacology in Medical Colleges

Ludhiana, July 26, 2018: On 27 July, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India, in partnership with the Department of Pharmacology at Christian Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, will offer a free continuing medical education workshop, "Modernising Medical Education: Replacing Animal Use With Superior Simulation Technologies". The workshop, which is open to faculty who teach postgraduate courses in medical colleges, will demonstrate various non-animal methods for teaching physiology and pharmacology. Key speakers will include Dr Dinesh Badyal of Christian Medical College & Hospital, Dr Rajeev of Guru Gobind Singh Medical College & Hospital, Faridkot; and Nitin Bavkar of Medimation Education.

"India's future physicians deserve the best training possible, and that means using human-patient simulators and other modern educational tools," says PETA India Science Policy Adviser Dr Rohit Bhatia. "PETA India hopes to help medical colleges provide their students with the skills to save human lives without killing any animals."

PETA India is funding a series of continuing medical education workshops across India to spread awareness of the latest training methods available for medical students, 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.

Recently, after being contacted by PETA India– whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to experiment on" – distinguished Member of Parliament and former Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha sent a letter to Medical Council of India (MCI) President Dr Jayshree Mehta urging her to ban all animal dissection and experimentation in the teaching of postgraduate medical courses in favour of using superior and humane non-animal methods.

In 2012, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change urged the MCI to replace the use of animals in teaching with modern, non-animal tools, such as simulation software, for both graduate and postgraduate medical students. The MCI banned the use of animal dissection at the undergraduate level sssin 2014 but has yet to do the same for postgraduate courses. PETA India has called on it to amend the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2000, to remove all mentions of animal-based training and has also written to Minister of Health & Family Welfare Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda asking him to ban the use of animals in postgraduate teaching.