Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will soon end its practice of using live animals to train medical students.
CBS News reported that ending the practice means a change to a popular but controversial course for students.
Previously, the Baltimore school put live pigs under anesthesia to perform medical procedures on them. The pigs were euthanized after the surgery.
"The latest task force to examine the pros and the cons and the ethics decided that the bar has to be pretty high to justify doing this," spokeswoman Audrey Huang told The Baltimore Sun. "While students were huge fans of the course it felt like it wasn’t absolutely necessary."
It was heavily criticized by animal rights groups.
One such group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said Hopkins was one two schools in North America that used live animals for medical education.
Since Hopkins is ending the practice, the only school continuing it is the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's College of Medicine.
WJZ reported that the school is looking into using simulators instead, which other medical schools have been using.
"Simply put, pigs and humans do not possess the same anatomy," Dr. John Pippin, Physicians Committee director of academic affairs, said in a statement Wednesday.
"Students are best trained for their careers in medicine with advanced, human-relevant technology -- not with live animals."
The course in which students train on live animals will end in June.
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