The Medical College of Wisconsin to Switch from Live Dogs to Live Pigs

Disclaimer: I support Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

Having said that, I have just one word for you: backfire.

PCRM put up a billboard near the Medical College of Wisconsin that reads: "Don’t put man’s best friend under the knife. Stop the Medical College of Wisconsin’s dog lab. www.SaveMCWanimals.org." There’s a photo of an adorable dog on it that tugs at the heartstrings quite nicely.

A local Milwaukee TV station covered this controversial billboard, and at no point did they say that the 60 dogs are killed after they’re used in practice surgeries. (Not that that’s the primary issue, but it is a significant omission.) And when the representative (Dick Katschke) of the Medical College was interviewed and said that the students don’t have the same experience using simulators (which they do use) as live animals, the reporter, Melanie Stout, didn’t inform her audience that over 85% of US medical schools don’t have live animal labs anymore. That 85% includes Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.

But the worst part is the unintended consequence of the campaign by PCRM: the Medical College of Wisconsin will be switching to pigs next year. And I doubt that a similar billboard, with a photo of a pig on it, will generate a fraction of the compassion and outrage that the dog billboard does. After all, we kill pigs every day, by the hundreds of thousands.

Here’s my Gray Matter: When you focus on the cuteness or the pet factor of an animal in your argument to refrain from torturing it, you’re inviting the suggestion to torture a less cute, less petlike creature instead. You encourage replacement. On the other hand, some would say that once you replace, you can concentrate (in some other way) on getting the replacement taken off the table (pun not intented), and the torture of any animal in that situation eliminated. I’m just not sure if it works that way.

This is similar to the new welfarist (Gary Francione’s term) versus abolitionist debate. As an abolitionist, I’d say the goal is to get all of the animals out of the labs, not replace the cuddly ones with those less traditionally cuddly. Getting pigs out of labs will be more difficult, as mistreating them is far more socially-acceptable. Therefore, the net result could be that people feel better about animal labs because they’re using pigs. After all, they’re "just pigs."

I’ll be interested to see the next step in PCRM’s campaign, as I know their intention was not to replace dogs with pigs. My recommendation would be to hit them in the ego. Far wealthier, more famous, and in many ways "better" educational institutions have left the draconian ways of live animal labs behind.