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(Physicans Committee for Responsible Medicine)

UPDATE: N.J. hospital abandons use of live dogs for medical training

MORRISTOWN - A national physicians' group is taking a hospital to task - via billboards - for its use of live dogs in its residency training program.

The hospital, Morristown Medical Center, defended the use of dogs in a four-hour offsite training session as an essential way for its emergency medicine doctors to learn crucial skills. Those skills cannot be learned through simulation or by using training devices, said hospital spokeswoman Elaine Andrecovich.

The plea from a dog stares down from two billboards erected earlier this week near the Morristown train station: "Don't kill man's best friend for medical testing."

A third billboard near Exit 13 of the New Jersey Turnpike is scheduled to go up shortly, said a spokeswoman for the group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

The Washington, DC-based non-profit targeted Morristown because the hospital remains one of the few in the country that continues to use live animals in its training. The group, founded in 1985, lobbies to eliminate animal testing and pushes for plant-based nutrition.

While the animals sometimes survive the surgical procedures demonstrated on them, all are killed after training is completed, Pippin's group claims.

The hospital defended the practice.

"For a small number of rare, life-saving procedures uncommonly seen in the Emergency Department--let alone during a residency--our emergency medicine residents attend one, four-hour lab program at an off-site facility not affiliated with Atlantic Health System or located on any Atlantic Health System property," said Andrecovich. "Though comparable, medical donors and simulators are not the physiological or anatomical equivalent of live tissue. This program allows them to practice these complicated, potentially life-saving procedures on live tissue."

In addition, Morristown is the only residency training program that reported it uses dogs, said cardiologist John Pippin, director of academic affairs for the group. Other training programs typically use pigs because that doesn't stir up public outrage as much as would dogs or cats, said Pippin.

"We have been unable to find out where these dogs come from," Pippin said. "They could be coming from anywhere."

There are about 200 residency training programs in emergency medicine in the United States. Of those, the group as so far surveyed 160. Nearly 90 percent of them say they do the same kind of training without using live animals.

In New Jersey, only Morristown said they used live animals, according to Pippin. Emergency medicine residents at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Hackensack University Medical Center, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School train their residents without the use of animals.

Pippin said these other medical facilities disprove Morristown's contention that live-animal training can accomplish what simulation cannot.

"It is not a superior way to learn. That's their prejudice," he said. "That is their opinion - and they're entitled to their opinion, but they're not entitled to make up facts to support their opinion."

He said his group resorted to public billboards only after discussions with hospital leaders failed.

Andrecovich defended the practice: "The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires our emergency residents be able to safely and proficiently perform life-saving procedures in order to satisfy their training requirements," she said in a statement.

"As such, Atlantic Health System echoes the statement of The American College of Surgeons, which believes that, "It is not possible to completely replace the use of animals and that the study of whole living organisms, tissues, and cells is an indispensable element of biomedical research, education, and teaching."

The hospital has not disclosed the location of the off-site training, saying only that the sessions did not take place on hospital or hospital-owned property.

Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook.