Unpatients: The Structural Violence of Animals in Medical Education
A medical student details his experience with, and opposition to, use of animals for physician training and offers insight into ways to counter this type of institutional violence against animals.
[Abstract excerpted from original source.]
“Physician training is an acculturation process in which students learn to emulate the practices, beliefs, and values of their professors. While many students are encouraged to express empathy and appreciation for their “first patient,” a human cadaver, medical education teaches students to devalue the lives and ignore the suffering of animal “unpatients” used for dissection and research. Teaching medical students to hurt animals is untenable morally and scientifically. This article utilizes three synergistic methodologies: a case study of a 2012 frog vivisection at Tulane University; an expanded theory of structural violence that exposes the methods by which animal suffering is made invisible and its infliction is thereby justified; and a pragmatic discussion of useful frames for health workers seeking to fight animal oppression. All three of these approaches are centered on reader action and activism.”