Dying to learn: Veterinary student suing Chicago-based DeVry over terminal surgeries

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. -- Jamie Scott calls terminal surgeries – in which veterinary students perform invasive surgeries on healthy animals, and then euthanize them – “the ultimate betrayal of trust.”

Scott is suing her veterinary school and its owner – DeVry Inc., the for-profit higher education company headquartered in a Chicago suburb – because of its requirement that students perform terminal surgeries to graduate.

She believes there are reasonable alternatives to the practice, which animal rights activists call inhumane. But some educators feel the surgeries are a crucial way for the future veterinarians to learn procedures, and about 50 percent of U.S. vet schools still require students to perform them.

Before she enrolled at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in 2006, Scott was told by one of the school’s admissions officers that terminal surgeries were optional, according to her lawsuit (highlights from which are available below). But when Scott arrived at the school’s campus, located on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, she learned the surgeries – performed on dogs, donkeys and sheep – were required. She was told she would fail if she didn’t take part in them, the lawsuit states.

Because of this, Scott is suing Ross and DeVry for misrepresentation and breach of contract and demanding the school create an alternative curriculum for her that does not involve terminal surgeries.

“There are thousands of people who graduate without ever killing anything and they are just as skilled if not more so then those that do kill,” Scott said in an email last week from St. Kitts.

Veterinary students could perform free or reduced-price surgeries on needy animals in a “mutually beneficial setting,” Scott said, rather than on healthy animals.

“The animals expect that we are there to help them and instead we take their lives to learn various procedures that could be learned without the death and needless torture,” she said.

Ross University declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed in a Colorado district court in February, and referred the matter to DeVry’s Oakbrook Terrace headquarters. A spokeswoman for DeVry, which purchased Ross in 2003, declined to comment.

Scott, a former Colorado resident now in her second year at Ross, claims the school’s head of surgery told her to drop out when she first voiced her opposition to terminal surgeries, and that her continued opposition has caused her “emotional distress.”

An interview with Scott in the Association of Veterinarians for Animals Rights’ newsletter (PDF), published last year, was emailed to all Ross students by the school’s dean and posted next to the school’s administrative office, according to the lawsuit.

“I never got any email from [the dean] directly, but the letters from the students and others pretty much explained to me that I was supposed to become so uncomfortable at the school I would leave,” said Scott.

In late March, Ross eliminated all terminal surgeries on dogs from its curriculum, although its students continue to perform terminal surgeries on donkeys and sheep, said Shalin Gala, a senior researcher for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“We are very thankful that the university took a step in the right direction by ending these dog surgeries, but the fact is that in the last week donkeys were killed for use in anatomy class,” Gala said Friday.

A few weeks before Ross stopped the surgeries on dogs, PETA launched a campaign against the university aiming to end all terminal surgeries at the school. Gala described the curriculum change as a response to PETA’s campaign, which included a protest outside the school’s head office in New Jersey and a proposal that Ross open a veterinary teaching hospital in St. Kitts.

But a Ross official called the change’s timing coincidental.

“Outside influences do not have any say, nor will they ever have any say, into how we will conduct our curriculum. Any belief to the contrary was just a coincidence in timing of the announcement,” Peter Goetz, Ross’ vice-president of enrolment management, was quoted as saying in the Sun St. Kitts/Nevis newspaper on April 2.

More and more U.S. veterinary schools are putting an end to terminal surgeries, instead opting to have students practice on injured or sick animals from shelters or in teaching hospitals, said Gala and Pam Runquist, of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights.

About half of U.S. veterinary schools no longer require students to perform terminal surgeries to graduate, according to a recent AVAR survey, said Runquist, the association’s director of companion animal issues. Terminal surgeries are legal, but schools are supposed to have searched for alternatives to the use of healthy animals, she said.

Because “it can be said that vet students can be trained without harming or killing animals,” Runquist said, schools should end all invasive and terminal surgeries.

“We believe that it’s important for students to work with animals – but work with animals in ways that benefit the animals themselves, as well as benefit the students,” she said.

For Scott, who said she will graduate from Ross in December 2009, the school’s decision regarding dogs hasn’t changed her predicament in St. Kitts. She still has not come to an agreement with the school to allow her to finish the seven-semester program without performing terminal surgeries.

“I do intend to have it come to some kind of resolution, since I am planning on staying at Ross and I will not kill an animal just to obtain a grade,” she said.

The case has yet to make progress. It was removed from Boulder County District Court and moved to a federal court in late March. Jennifer Thomaidis, Scott’s attorney, said Ross and DeVry’s lawyers had requested an extension.

Highlights from Jamie Scott's Complaint