The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has raised billboard to call out Morristown Medical Center over their use of live dogs for medical testing.

Two billboards have gone up near the Morristown train station, showing a dog next to the words "Don't kill man's best friend for medical testing."  A third billboard is scheduled to go up on the Turnpike near Exit 13.

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The PCRM chose Morristown Medical because it is one of the few in the country that still uses live animals in its training. The group claims that even though animals sometimes survive the surgical procedures demonstrated on them, all are killed after training is completed.

The hospital defended their use as an essential way for its emergency medicine doctors to learn crucial skills. Those skills cannot be learned through simulation or by using training devices, said hospital spokeswoman Elaine Andrecovich.

Morristown is the only residency training program that reported it uses dogs. Other training programs use pigs because that doesn't stir up public outrage as much as dogs or cats. There are about 200 residency training programs in emergency medicine in the United States. Of those, the PCRM surveyed 160, and nearly 90 percent of them say they do the same kind of training without using live animals. In New Jersey, only Morristown said they used live animals. Emergency medicine residents at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Hackensack University Medical Center, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School train their residents without the use of animals.

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