Vegetarian dilemma
I'm taking a little class for a couple of days. Yay! I like school. I love multiple choice tests. And it sort of counts as working. 'cept there are no real people with sad stories.
Refreshing.
It's a class that teaches the things I think I may need to know, but won't have time to read about and figure out on my own when the time comes that I need to know them.
I.e. if I need to know about antibiotic doses, I can turn to my trusty small machine or any number of books or another doctor and figure them out. Same for pretty much everything else. Except in dire emergencies, people can wait a few minutes or days until their doctor is sure about something.
But for those dire emergencies, I figured I should take the class *before* I need to know it. So, I'm getting up early to learn how to put in emergency airways and chest tubes, and to diagnose the things that kill quickly.
I am not alone in my belief that these skills really ought to be learned by trying them out. The first time I tried to put in a chest tube as a medical student, I didn't push nearly hard enough, and didn't get it past the ribs. That really sucked for the person whose chest I was poking at, who then needed more poking by the resident.
The idea of this class is to try it out a few times, so that when I need to do this on another real person, I'll get it right on the first try.
But how to practice? This course has traditionally offered pigs, or rescued dogs as test subjects. The animals are anaesthetised, and theoretically feel no pain. Certainly less than that poor old lady with the collapsed lung who was the test subject for my first crack at this skill.
The course, as offered in this town to about 15 MDs/year, would use 4 pigs (or dogs). At the end of the day, the animals would be "put down".
Now, I eat no bacon. And was a little squicked out about the pork part of the day. But lots of people do eat lots of bacon. I have personally met several people who tried the At.kin's diet at some point. I also know that pork sales were pretty depressed in this part of the world this year, and that several thousand pigs needed to be destroyed.
I also know that being able to put in a chest tube will make me a more useful person. It will certainly save someone else from unnecessary pain and possibly death/disability.
(I have also mellowed/sold out enormously since I was 16, and feel only the slightest twinge of guilt for planning to practice exclusively downstream medicine btw, so take this as you will)
I was perfectly willing to drink coffee, don gloves, and swallow hard to get through the pork product part of the day.
And I will admit that I was also *quite* relieved to find that the day was going to be entirely plastic people.
That is, until I heard the story of how that came to be.
See, there is only one company that makes plastic bodybits that are certified realistic enough to teach this course to doctors. They sell their product to make money. And they cost a LOT of money. They also have lots of expensive disposable plastic bits. They are close, but not quite like the real thing. They are closer to people than pigs in some ways, and not as close in others. And did I mention that they cost a LOT of money?
The thing that I have a hard time with, is the manner in which these bodybits are marketed. Although it is apparently perfectly legal, the company collects the name of institutions and physicians who are teaching the course, the dates of the course, and provides them to activist groups. They rely on the earnest altruism and free time of idealistic undergraduates and other concerned community members to pressure the doctors and institutions to stop using live animals for the class. Pressuring the program to buy the only plastic bodybits approved for use -- from themselves.
Which has the other side effect of raising the future cost of the class, which will make it expensive enough that my residency program will no longer cover the fee. Leaving future trainees to either suck up the (substantial) cost of the class, or graduate from training without having learned these skills.
Sketchy.
I'm not sure if I feel even dirtier than I would had I been covered in pig grease at this juncture. yuck.
(also, for the record, I did have to pierce chicken legs this afternoon, so in some ways, I feel like I got the worst of both worlds)
Refreshing.
It's a class that teaches the things I think I may need to know, but won't have time to read about and figure out on my own when the time comes that I need to know them.
I.e. if I need to know about antibiotic doses, I can turn to my trusty small machine or any number of books or another doctor and figure them out. Same for pretty much everything else. Except in dire emergencies, people can wait a few minutes or days until their doctor is sure about something.
But for those dire emergencies, I figured I should take the class *before* I need to know it. So, I'm getting up early to learn how to put in emergency airways and chest tubes, and to diagnose the things that kill quickly.
I am not alone in my belief that these skills really ought to be learned by trying them out. The first time I tried to put in a chest tube as a medical student, I didn't push nearly hard enough, and didn't get it past the ribs. That really sucked for the person whose chest I was poking at, who then needed more poking by the resident.
The idea of this class is to try it out a few times, so that when I need to do this on another real person, I'll get it right on the first try.
But how to practice? This course has traditionally offered pigs, or rescued dogs as test subjects. The animals are anaesthetised, and theoretically feel no pain. Certainly less than that poor old lady with the collapsed lung who was the test subject for my first crack at this skill.
The course, as offered in this town to about 15 MDs/year, would use 4 pigs (or dogs). At the end of the day, the animals would be "put down".
Now, I eat no bacon. And was a little squicked out about the pork part of the day. But lots of people do eat lots of bacon. I have personally met several people who tried the At.kin's diet at some point. I also know that pork sales were pretty depressed in this part of the world this year, and that several thousand pigs needed to be destroyed.
I also know that being able to put in a chest tube will make me a more useful person. It will certainly save someone else from unnecessary pain and possibly death/disability.
(I have also mellowed/sold out enormously since I was 16, and feel only the slightest twinge of guilt for planning to practice exclusively downstream medicine btw, so take this as you will)
I was perfectly willing to drink coffee, don gloves, and swallow hard to get through the pork product part of the day.
And I will admit that I was also *quite* relieved to find that the day was going to be entirely plastic people.
That is, until I heard the story of how that came to be.
See, there is only one company that makes plastic bodybits that are certified realistic enough to teach this course to doctors. They sell their product to make money. And they cost a LOT of money. They also have lots of expensive disposable plastic bits. They are close, but not quite like the real thing. They are closer to people than pigs in some ways, and not as close in others. And did I mention that they cost a LOT of money?
The thing that I have a hard time with, is the manner in which these bodybits are marketed. Although it is apparently perfectly legal, the company collects the name of institutions and physicians who are teaching the course, the dates of the course, and provides them to activist groups. They rely on the earnest altruism and free time of idealistic undergraduates and other concerned community members to pressure the doctors and institutions to stop using live animals for the class. Pressuring the program to buy the only plastic bodybits approved for use -- from themselves.
Which has the other side effect of raising the future cost of the class, which will make it expensive enough that my residency program will no longer cover the fee. Leaving future trainees to either suck up the (substantial) cost of the class, or graduate from training without having learned these skills.
Sketchy.
I'm not sure if I feel even dirtier than I would had I been covered in pig grease at this juncture. yuck.
(also, for the record, I did have to pierce chicken legs this afternoon, so in some ways, I feel like I got the worst of both worlds)
Labels: residency
posted by lothyn at 7.12.09
2 Comments:
business ethics - the very definition of an oxymoron... that plastic bits outfit just put itself in the karma sweepstakes...
I'm no doctor, but I have to say I feel this a lot. Even using "rescued" dogs makes me feel ill. But I've had bronchitis and I wear glasses, so products tested on animals in really cruel ways have likely saved my life.
Ethics is always expensive, I guess. How much further would we be in psychology if people were still allowed to do the same kinds of experiments Stanley Milgram did?
Wow. Being alive is such a crock.
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