A nonprofit medical-ethics group that opposes using animals in medical training says it wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate WMed.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine objects to the medical school's use of live pigs in medical training exercises. It wants the USDA to decide whether those trainings violate animal welfare laws.
WMed says the trainings provide valuable experience to students and that it has high confidence in Charles River Laboratories' animal welfare standards. The trainings take place at the company's facility in Mattawan.
Charles River has faced controversy in the past for its handling of animal test subjects.
"Patients aren't pigs"
PCRM criticized WMed in a recent billboard ad campaign in Kalamazoo.
"Hey WMed, patients aren't pigs!" the ads read. "Stop killing animals to 'teach' doctors."
In a statement sent by WMed spokesperson Laura Eller, the medical school said that no students are forced to participate in trainings involving live pigs. It said those that do gain valuable experience that is hard to replicate.
"The goal of these programs is to provide our learners with critical training to effectively hone techniques to be able to manage real-world trauma and emergency situations where our patients’ lives hang in the balance," the school stated.
"Equally effective synthetic model alternatives do not yet exist for every complex medical procedure that emergency physicians and surgeons must be trained to perform, which is why the need for animal labs continues," it continued.
"Those who participate in this training method have said it is incredibly valuable and provides them with the confidence to perform the procedures in real-world situations," WMed added.
But in its letter to the USDA, PCRM claimed that worthy alternatives to "animal labs" are readily available and that most schools have adopted them. It claimed that nearly all emergency medicine residency programs in the US and Canada use only non-animal methods to train their students.
"Nationwide, 284 emergency medicine programs use only human-relevant methods, including Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic. These methods, called simulators, can bleed, breathe, and even 'die,'" the group's letter to the USDA stated.
"In total, 97% of emergency medicine residency programs in the U.S. and Canada train without animals," the group added.
John Pippen, director of academic affairs for PCRM, said WMed is an outlier.
“They're lying about it, saying that there are no alternatives and virtually everybody else is using alternatives,” Pippen said.
"We have the technology now," psychiatrist Jennifer Giordano of Bloomfield Hills, who is part of the PCRM campaign, told WMUK. "Why would we use such antiquated techniques to train physicians of today?”
Charles River
The trainings for WMed students happen at Charles River Laboratories in Mattawan.
"We are confident that our partners at Charles River Laboratories uphold the highest standards of animal welfare. All procedures performed use both analgesics and general anesthesia, and animals are monitored for the entire duration of the lab by trained Charles River staff," WMed wrote.
But Charles River has faced criticism and investigations in the past over its treatment of primates, dogs and other animal test subjects.
In 2019 the company halted a fungicide trial in beagles after an undercover investigation at the Mattawan facility by the Humane Society of the United States.