John Hopkins School of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country, will end its use of live pigs to train its college students.
The change will go into effect next month, the Baltimore college announced on Wednesday, eliminating a course where students operated on live pigs that were euthanized after the procedure.
“The latest task force to examine the pros and the cons and the ethics decided that the bar has to be pretty high to justify doing this,” Audrey Huang, a Hopkins spokeswoman, told the Baltimore Sun. “While students were huge fans of the course it felt like it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
Previously, John Hopkins was one of two schools in the United States and Canada to use animals for medical education, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
“It is a tremendous relief to hear that Johns Hopkins University will finally begin using up-to-date, human-relevant methods to teach human medicine,” John Pippin, director of academic affairs for the committee, said in a statement. “This change will align Johns Hopkins’ medical education program with 99 percent of the country’s programs.”
Pippin added that The University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Chattanooga is now the only medical school in the country that continues to use live animals in its curriculum.
