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Leonard B. Segal, DO
Mt Sinai Hospital Philadelphia, Pa

JAMA. 1991;266(24):3422.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The AMA Council's report on the "Use of Animals in Medical Education"¹ reports on the opportunity for students to "develop expertise in a given technique" before "performing the procedure on a human being." Probably less than 5% of medical students will ever perform any of the procedures they practice on animals. Even those who do will not have the opportunity for years after they have left the laboratory.

I challenge anyone to perform any mechanical procedure a single time and then profess to have developed any degree of expertise that they can then apply several years later.

The statement is made that "the use of animals gives the student a direct understanding of how living systems work." Nothing could be farther from the truth. More can be learned about how living systems work from a 1-hour public television presentation than hours in a laboratory performing singular . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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