Victory! Maharaja Agrasen Medical College Ends Undergraduate Training Using Animals After PETA India Appeal

After a concerned student alerted PETA India to the apparently illegal use of rabbits to train undergraduate medical students at Maharaja Agrasen Medical College in Agroha, Haryana, PETA India appealed to the college’s director-principal, Dr Gopal Singal, to end the abuse of animals – and he agreed, replying that

“now the institution is not using any animal experimentation even for demonstration for [undergraduate] courses”.

In its letters to the college, PETA India pointed out that the use of rabbits – who apparently were denied food for several days at a time and were being held in crowded, wire-floored cages that cut into their paws and were spattered with faeces and urine – seemed to violate the Medical Council of India’s 2014 notifications for undergraduate curricula; the Indian government’s 2012 directive instructing that animal dissection be replaced with modern, non-animal teaching methods at the undergraduate level; and the regulations established by the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals on the use of animals in experiments.

Experimenters often drug animals, mutilate them, drip chemicals into their eyes, and subject them to other cruel procedures before killing them.

Comparative studies have repeatedly shown that non-animal teaching methods – including computer simulations, interactive CD-ROMs, films, charts, and lifelike models – are superior to crude animal dissection and experiments. In addition, they have the advantage of saving educators time and money because, unlike animals, they can typically be used repeatedly at no further cost.

What's Wrong With Animal Experimentation?