Urging the Osmania Medical College and Gandhi Medical College managements to desist from using live animals in medical studies, PETA (People For Ethical Treatment of Animals) said that computer-assisted models would serve the purpose.
The organisation said the Medical Council Of India (MCI) had recently withdrawn its regulation that every medical school in India must maintain an animal house and use animals as teaching models.
The MCI amendment came after the PETA had written to the body to eliminate the use of animals and introduce training methods without using animals.
According to a press release by the organisation, PETA's India head Anuradha Srivastava said, "This is a major step forward in medical education. Medical Colleges now have the opportunity, not only to spare animals' lives, but also provide students with the most modern training methods available."
Dr. Anuradha Srivastava added that many top medical-training institutions in the US, including Harvard Medical School, Stanford University School Of Medicine, Yale University School Of Medicine and Duke University School Of Medicine, no longer have live-animal laboratories. She said that they use some of the many alternatives to animal experiments, which include interactive computer models, non-invasive human-based experiments and high-tech human patient simulators that breathe and respond to drugs and treatments just as humans do.
PETA India is informing medical schools in the country about the new regulation.