This year's donation is sponsored by EURCA and the item is "Fetch", a dog with first aid wounds, which normally costs $869.
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APSF/VAM anesthesia machine workbook now available in German 21/5/2004We are pleased to announce that chapter 1 of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF - http://www.apsf.org) anesthesia machine workbook has been translated to German by Drs Haueser and Gebhardt and is available free of charge from the VAM web site http://www.
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EURCA Newsletter 7 (July 2004) 7/5/2004

Editorial
During the first half of 2004, the EURCA Project Team members and five National Contacts carried out outreach activities, including presentations at congresses. A project proposal for an ERASMUS Thematic Network (TN) was submitted in March.
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Computers needed for alternatives in higher education in Romania 29/4/2004

Does your University has old computers leftover, which are no longer in use? You can send them to Romania, where Prof Mungiu is establishing alternatives courses in teaching. There are only limited resources in Romania, but the will to offer humane alternatives in education is strong.
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EURCA negotiates discount deals with major alternatives publishers 28/4/2004

PRESS RELEASE

EURCA negotiates discount deals with major alternatives publishers

The European Resource Centre for Alternatives in Higher Education (EURCA: www.eurca.
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Teaching Materials and Methods presentations at the German Physiology meeting 22/4/2004
Deutsche Physiologische Gesellschaft

Handling Human Samples Is Worth the Risk 15/4/2004
The Scientist

test 8/4/2004

test

Address change EURCA in the Netherlands 8/4/2004

Please notice an address change of the Dutch EURCA office, as of 9 August:
EURCA
Utrecht University
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Department of Animals, Science and Society / NCA
PO BOX 80166
3508 TD Utrecht
The Netherlands

The new visiting address will be:
Yalelaan 2
3584 CM Utrecht
The Netherlands

Phone and fax numbers will remain the same.
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Address change EURCA in the Netherlands 8/4/2004

Please notice address change of the Dutch EURCA office, as of 9 August:
EURCA
Utrecht University
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Department of Animals, Science and Society / NCA
PO BOX 80166
3508 TD Utrecht
The Netherlands

The new visiting address will be:
Yalelaan 2
3584 CM Utrecht
The Netherlands

Phone and fax numbers will remain the same.
Read more

Airway device tutorials added to VAM web site 6/3/2004
Virtual Anesthesia Machine

Evaluation of “Muscle Control” by Pharmacy students, The Netherlands 19/2/2004

In 2001, when the program “Muscle Control” was not finished yet, the key question of the program was evaluated by students, after they completed the program in the classroom. The key question in the program was “How is the required muscular strength adjusted and controlled, and by which physiological and morphological features is this directed?” (using skeletal and cardiac muscles as examples).
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EURCA sponsors "Fetch", a dog training mannikin with First Aid wounds 9/2/2004

Rescue Critters! brand donate one of their products annually to a (non-)profit organisation, a school, fire department, animal regulations or to another type of business.

This year's donation is sponsored by EURCA and the item is "Fetch", a dog with first aid wounds, which normally costs $869.
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EURCA sponsors "Fetch", a dog training mannikin with First Aid wounds 9/2/2004Rescue Critters! brand donate one of their products annually to a (non-)profit organisation, a school, fire department or Animal Regulations or other type of business.

This year's donation is sponsored by EURCA.
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EURCA Newsflash 6 (January 2004) 4/2/2004

EURCA Newsflash 6 (January 2004)

Editorial
This is the first Newsflash of 2004. During the second semester of 2003, the EURCA Project Team members carried out a number of outreach activities, including congresses.
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Password needed for VAM web site 30/10/2003

VAM users mailing list (12,786 registered users): Announcement #13
Virtual Anesthesia Machine: http://www.anest.ufl.edu/vam

On Saturday November 1, 2003 between 12.00 noon and 3.00 pm Eastern Standard Time, we will go live with a redesigned VAM web site that will require a username and password to access the VAM simulation and workbook which will both remain free.
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New topic on the EURCA Discussion Board 12/10/2003

New reviews, outreach activities and EURCA National Contacts Meeting 9/10/2003

Reviews
Over the last couple of months, EURCA added new reviews, written by experts in the field, to the alternatives database. They are:
SimPatch;
Respiration Pharmacology and
Critical Care Fluffy

If anyone is using one of the models in our database and would like to comment or write a review and earn 150 euros, please let us know.
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'No Harm' Approach to Veterinary Medicine 10/8/2003
Los Angeles Times

October 7, 2003

LOS ANGELES

Students at a new veterinary college are learning their profession by practicing on animals that have died naturally.

By Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writer

Thirty students, standing around several stainless steel tables, are poking at dead dogs with scalpels. It's a scene that would likely raise the hackles of most dog owners — or prompt them to hide under a bed.

But these students, members of the first class at Western University's new veterinary school in Pomona, actually are practicing what the school calls "no harm" medicine. They are part of what school leaders say is a revolution in the way that veterinary medicine is taught and practiced in the United States.

At many schools, it's common practice to buy live dogs and cats from pounds or biomedical firms, then have students operate on them and later euthanize them. But these kinds of surgeries won't occur at Western, which has pledged to use donated animals only — those that have already died of natural causes or been put to sleep because of illness or old age.

"I don't know that I could dissect an animal knowing that it was killed for that purpose," said Rebecca Merlo, 23, of San Diego as she tries to find the shoulder joint of the dog she's working on. "I'm glad I don't have to be a part of that."

Lecturing, too, has been abolished at Western; it's considered too boring and ineffective. Nor is there a veterinary hospital on campus. Students instead will hone their diagnostic and treatment skills in courses where they are presented with theoretical case studies — such as a dog with a tricky shoulder. Later, they will get much of their training alongside real vets in clinics throughout Southern California.

"I think that most veterinary schools bristle at the words 'animal rights' because they perceive it as a bunch of wild-eyed lunatics freeing animals and burning down buildings," said Shirley Johnston, the dean of Western's veterinary school. "I know that our job is to educate students. But we think we should stand for this."

The school, which opened in August, is the only one in the state besides UC Davis. It adds some distinctive touches. Several days before the students began dissecting their dogs, for example, a ceremony was held in which the dogs' owners told students about their deceased pets' lives, even showing them videos.

"Other vet programs and labs that I toured, you're being educated with tools that are just perceived as meat," said Brian Van Horn, 29, a student from Porterville. "Here we actually know the names of our cadavers. We get information about the lives they led."

Some veterinarians applaud the school's approach.

"I know people who have literally been waiting for years for Western to open," said Linnaea Stull, a veterinarian in Atascadero on the Central Coast.

In 1999, Stull helped lead a student revolt at the University of Illinois. Veterinary students had alleged that the school was asking them to kill animals for no good reason — sometimes to see how an infection destroyed an animal's organs.

Other animal doctors wonder whether pet owners will muster the emotional strength to donate animals to the school for hands-on dissections. They also wonder whether the lack of operations on live animals at the school will deprive students of surgical experience.

"It's certainly a different flavor" at Western, said Jack Walther, president of the American Veterinary Medical Assn. "From my own personal perspective, there is a certain necessity to doing some procedures on a warm body, if you will. It's just the reality of learning medicine."

There are an estimated 61.9 million dogs, 68.9 million cats, 10.1 million pet birds and 5.1 million horses in the U.S., and millions more farm, zoo and research animals, according to the veterinarians' organization.

Although the number of pets has increased in the U.S. in recent years, the number of veterinarians has not. Most of the nation's veterinary programs were established in the late 1800s or early 1900s at large agricultural schools, such as Texas A&M, Illinois, Minnesota, Washington State and UC Davis. In those days, most veterinarians were men treating farm animals.

These days, most veterinarians-in-training are not men; 73 of the 86 students in Western's first class are women. And few universities are willing to found veterinary schools, which are expensive to operate, when they are strapped for funds to run existing programs.

Including Western, there are 28 veterinary colleges in the U.S., not enough to meet demand. Recent statistics from the American Medical Assn. and the Assn. of American Veterinary Medical Colleges suggest that it is now harder to get into veterinary school than medical school.

In the past, ethics was an important part of a veterinarian's education, but hardly at the top of the list. That has changed markedly, because most students who go to the agricultural schools end up in cities, caring for small pets — and because urban pet owners sometimes see their animals as having the same rights as humans.

When I was a student at Washington State, I took a junior surgery course. Every week we would anesthetize a dog and do a specified surgical procedure," Johnston said, recalling her days as a student in the early 1970s. "We might break the femur, then pin it, or resect a loop of intestine or spay it. Then we might wake the dog up and do something different. At the end of the semester we would put it to sleep.

"It would never have occurred to me then that I shouldn't do this. I'm ashamed to tell you I didn't question it."

By the time Johnston took the job at Western in 1998, when the veterinary school was in the planning stage, she had decided not just to question it — but to change it. She created the school's "reverence for life" program and decided it would be a major part of the school's marketing effort to new students.

On a tour of the school, Johnston enters a classroom and points out a board with pegs in it. Next to the board is a box with a hole in it large enough to accommodate a human arm.

Johnston said that when she was a student, she and her peers would line up behind a cow and wait their turn to feel the cow's ovaries. At Western, students won't get near a cow until after they have lined up and felt the pegs — stand-ins for ovaries.

"Students in this day and age are much more compassionate than maybe they were years ago," said Bennie Osburn, the dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. "The students are wanting to assist in helping animals in every way possible. This is a trend that has been taking place, but I would say that most schools have not made as large a comment about it as Western has."

Gini Barrett is Western's resident ethicist — but she is neither a veterinarian nor a scientist. She grew up on a 40,000-acre ranch in Kansas. She has branded cattle, watched as cowboys castrated bulls and revived calves half-frozen to death in blizzards.

But at the age of 32, she rescued a baby mouse, tiny and hairless, that had become separated from its mother in a barn. She raised it on a bottle, and it got her thinking: "If this, the least of creatures, is so precious, what about the rest of them?"

Barrett is a longtime lobbyist for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Her interest in animals led her to a job with the American Humane Assn., and from there, to her post at Western University. She teaches a mandatory two-year ethics course.

It goes well beyond the traditional questions of when a pet should be put to sleep, or whether it's appropriate for vets to advertise. One of the topics she considers most pressing, for example, is how animals are cared for on farms. Much of today's animal rights movement focuses on intensive livestock and poultry production and the cramped conditions that some animals are forced to live in.

If Western's students decide to work in agriculture, she wants them to understand all sides of these issues. She doesn't believe farmers will listen to animal rights activists, but they will probably listen to a veterinarian.

"I want veterinarians to feel empowered," Barrett said. "The silent veterinarian is not what I want."
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EURCA Newsflash 5 August 2003 8/6/2003

Editorial
Welcome to our summer edition of the EURCA Newsflash. The first half of 2003 has been quiet to some extent and therefore the Newsflash was not published in April. In March and April, the EURCA web site has been unavailable for almost two months due to problems with our host domain name server.
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Book review From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse 28/5/2003

Book review ‘from guinea pig to computer mouse: alternative methods for a progressive, humane education’

By Nick Jukes and Mihnea Chiuia
InterNICHE, Leicester, England, 2003
544 pp.
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Domain name recovered and more images in the database 23/4/2003

We are happy to announce the recovery of the EURCA domain name www.eurca.org and being back up online with our original URL again.

Other positive news includes the number of images that has been attached to the records in the alternatives database.
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New reviews, outreach activities and EURCA National Contacts Meeting 10/3/2003

Reviews
Over the last couple of months, EURCA added new reviews, written by experts in the field, to the alternatives database. They are:
SimPatch;
Respiration Pharmacology and
Critical Care Fluffy

If anyone is using one of the models in our database and would like to comment or write a review and earn 150 euros, please let us know.
Read more

EURCA Newsflash January 2003 29/1/2003

EURCA Newsflash 4

January 29, 2003

Welcome to the fourth (winter edition) of the EURCA Newsflash. This issue contains a short update on our alternatives reviews programme, plans for 2003 and a list of forthcoming events.
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Facts and figures regarding animal experiments in the Netherlands 4/12/2002

There is news regarding the numbers of animal experiments in the Netherlands over 2001. There's a brand new report on the statistics of animal use, by the Dutch ministery of Health. It is up online, but in Dutch at
http://www.
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Newsflash September 2002 25/9/2002

EURCA Newsflash 3

September 25, 2002

The third (autumn edition) of the EURCA Newsflash contains a report on recent congresses, a description of a NEW feature on the web site, and details of new reviews and ongoing developments.
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Educational Resources Award 11/8/2002

Educational Resources Award
In April we asked teachers to submit teaching support materials for the Educational Resources Award. Unfortunately, at this time none have been received and we have decided to extend the final submission date until 11th December 2002.
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EURCA Educational award 11/7/2002

In April we asked teachers to submit teaching support materials for the Educational Resources Award. Unfortunately, at this time none have been received and we have decided to extend the final submission date until 11th November 2002.
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EURCA Educational award 11/7/2002

In April we asked teachers to submit teaching support materials for the Educational Resources Award. Unfortunately, at this time none have been received and we have decided to extend the final submission date until 11th November 2002.
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Answers and questions with regard to training methods employed for teaching surgeons endoscopic surgery 16/5/2002

Summary of responses received from a compmed post:
"I would like to hear from those of you with affiliations with teaching hospitals regarding the training methods employed for teaching surgeons endoscopic surgery.
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Background information on the 3R's 25/4/2002

Although most people in the field of animal use and alternatives, know about the concept of the three R’s (“replacement”, “reduction” and “refinement”), not everyone new to the field is familiar with these definitions.
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Veterinary anatomy images 25/4/2002
Veterinary anatomy faculty at the University of Minnesota

This website: http://vanat.cvm.umn.edu/WebSites.html shows high quality veterinary anatomy images and background information. Check them out.
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Hopkins Student Wins Fellowship for Human Cell Research 10/9/2001
Altweb

A Johns Hopkins University graduate student has received the Lasker Graduate Fellowship Award to support an innovative approach to lead research.
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Stony Brook University and Saint Louis University End Animal Labs 24/9/2007
PCRM Letters, september 2007

Two more medical schools have stopped using live animal labs in medical education. Stony Brook University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in New York and Saint Louis University School of Medicine join eight others that...
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Second Newsflash 25/4/2002

EURCA Newsflash 2

Dear all,

This short spring edition of the EURCA Newsflash contains details of new reviews, brief workshop reports and an announcement about a new Educational Resources Award.
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Background information on the 3R's 30/1/2002

For those new to the site or new to the area of alternatives to animal use, here is a brief overview on the three R's, replacement, reduction and refinement. A more extensive article on the use of animals in education and alternatives will be due in March.
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First edition of the EURCA Newsflash 28/1/2002
Dear users of alternatives and other interested readers,
This is the first edition of the EURCA Newsflash, intended to inform you about project developments. We hope to produce a Newsflash to keep you updated each quarter.
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