'Shatrughan Sinha calls for end to animal dissection in PG courses'

The PETA today said former Union Health minister and senior BJP leader Shatrughan Sinha has written to the Medical Council of India (MCI) and urged it to replace animal dissection and experimentation with non-animal training methods in all postgraduate medical courses.

Calling animal dissection a "vestige" of a "crueler, less enlightened time", Sinha said computer-assisted learning (CAL) and human-simulation techniques are among the methods that can replace animal use in postgraduate medical curriculum, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals quoted him as saying.

"Ultimately CAL programmes save money because unlike programmes that use animals they can be used repeatedly, allowing students to duplicate each step till they are proficient and confident," he was quoted as saying in a letter by the PETA.

"Every medical school in the US and Canada, including those at Harvard, Yale and Duke universities, now use an animal curricula," he said.

Sinha said the MCI would be doing right if they ended the "archaic practice" of dissecting and experimenting on animals in post graduate medical courses.