Screaming dogs and barbaric practices at Aussie vet schools

[Guest guest]

Hi,

 

I support the campaign to stop using live animals in the teaching

of veterinary science in Australia and any other country where

this practice occurs.

(see the previous post by protectionglw and the link to

http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/knight.html

regarding photos taken in a campaign by West Australian

veterinary student Andrew Knight who asked for alternatives

to vivisection in his vet course at Murdoch University in Western

Australia).

 

I recently spoke to a vet who graduated from the University of Queensland

several years ago and she was still very traumatised. She said she was the

only one in her class

who openly protested against the use and killing of live healthy dogs and

other animals in teaching

vet science. She said she was marked down in her course for verbally

protesting.

She also said dogs used in her vet course were sourced from a pound

(shelter).

The University also picked up unwanted

greyhounds to be used and killed by the students.

 

Can you believe that some poor little dog who has been part of a family

and who has either been abandoned or lost and never claimed from a pound

would end up being deliberately killed by veterinary students?

 

Can you imagine the faith and trust of these lost and abandoned dogs who

have become used

to trusting people being betrayed by vet students who thought nothing of

operating

on them and then killing them? Where does this foster compassion in vets?

Who speaks out for these animals? Why are some students afraid to speak out?

(One AR student told my correspondent to keep quiet because there was

nothing

anyone could do to stop the use of the live dogs and other animals and that

she

would only be penalised if she complained).

 

Many greyhounds used in vet schools were often cared for by families till

the dogs were no longer winning any more money on the race track.

What a betrayal of trust to abandon these dogs to become tools of research

at vet schools and other research institutions.

 

The vet I spoke to said the University of Queensland vet school spokesperson

said they had a very good vet school because the vets got to work on live

animals

and this gave them an advantage.

 

My correspondent also stated she heard a dog continuously screaming in pain

for about 5 minutes and no-one did anything.

She said she went into the back room to see why the dog was screaming.

She said the person with the dog

said it was was being pumped full of a chemical (formaline?) to preserve

it.

When my correspondent asked why the dog was screaming,

she was told it was being " a sook " (cowardly and weak minded colloqualism)

over its injection. A chemical is apparently injected into some

sedated dogs to help preserve them before they are killed. Keeping them

alive during

the process apparently allows the heart to pump the chemical evenly around

the

dog's body to preserve the body. This is information I obtained from a phone

conversation

with an ex-vet student and perhaps someone would like to verify it for me by

visiting one

of these vet schools and asking the tough questions that need to be asked

about procedures

involving the use of live health dogs.

 

My vet friend also mentioned greyhounds being paraded before the students

while

dead (preserved) greyhounds and other dead dogs were lying upside down in

bicycle rack

type racks in full view of the newcomer live greyhound dogs to be butchered

later during the vet course.

 

I have heard a better way to teach vet science is to allow vet students to

assist real vets

in clinics and shelters to save lives, not to take lives.

 

Some of the procedures taught to vet students are to operate on dogs,

resusatate them and

then euthanase them. Other dogs are repeatedly used for x-ray practice and

one of the x-ray

dogs who was taken home by a vet student to be a pet, had so many tumours it

had to be

put to sleep (annecdotal evidence indicates an overexposure to x-rays can

contribute to cancer).

 

My vet friend has been severely traumatised by the vet course she undertook.

She was marked down for protesting.

 

I believe the use of live healthy dogs to be killed during vet courses

teaches a lack of compassion, caring

and respect for animals by the Universities allowing such practices.

 

Consider the fact that your own veterinary surgeon who professes to care for

your dog or cat

could have been one of the students who once participated in deliberately

operating and killing

live healthy dogs just like yours. Consider that your vet is probably one of

those who may never

have spoken a word against these barbaric practices. Obviously anything goes

for some people

whose ultimate aim is a well paying secure job and who care nothing for the

morals and ethics of

how they achieve that aim.

 

I also heard of a paper given by one vet school lecturer who spoke of the

effects of a snake bite

observed in dogs in great deail.

 

Were the dogs allowed to be bitten by snakes and then observed as the they

shook and

salivated and suffered so someone could write a paper?

 

My veterinary friend could not understand the potential logic and cruelty in

this.

 

What a pity there are not a thousand Andrew Knights (Aussie consciencious

objecter

vet student) at every vet school to campaign

against the use of live animals in teaching vet science .

 

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women]

to do nothing.

--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Marguerite