Pharmacology Educators: Chance to Get Virtual Dissection Software – Free!
As part of its vigorous campaign to replace the use of animals for teaching and training across the country, PETA India has teamed up with Simcology to offer the company’s eponymous virtual animal simulation software for free to educators. The groundbreaking collaboration will allow pharmacology students to conduct experiments using computer-assisted, interactive teaching methods while sparing countless mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals their lives.
Following efforts by PETA India, progressive scientists, and others, the University Grants Commission banned animal dissection in life sciences and zoology courses and the Medical Council of India (MCI) and Pharmacy Council of India prohibited the use of animals to train undergraduate medical and pharmacy students, respectively – favouring non-animal techniques instead. In 2022, the National Medical Commission (formerly MCI) revised its guidelines for postgraduate pharmacology curricula recommending the use of several non-animal teaching and training methods and no longer making certain routine laboratory experiments on animals mandatory.
Research shows that a significant number of students at every educational level are uncomfortable with the use of animals in dissection and experimentation, and some even turn away from scientific careers rather than violating their principles. In addition, computer software programmes can be used repeatedly, which saves time and money, and they also help maintain ecological balance by sparing animals’ lives.
The Simcology software will help replace experiments on animals, in which they may be forced to consume food or water laced with a chemical, forced to inhale a chemical, or deliberately infected with diseases and mutilated, after which they would be killed via suffocation or neck dislocation.
Ready to conduct experiments using computer-assisted, interactive teaching methods? Request your free software today! (Please note that this offer is only available to educators in India.)
