PETA India Offers Free Simulation Software to India’s Pharmacology Educators

Delhi – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India is partnering with Simcology to provide the company's eponymous virtual animal simulation software for free to educators for Gandhi Jayanti and beyond as part of its aggressive campaign to replace the use of animals in teaching and training across the nation. With the aid of innovative computer-assisted interactive learning techniques, pharmacology students will be able to conduct studies while saving the lives of numerous mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals thanks to the ground-breaking partnership.

Famously opposing vivisection, or using animals in studies, was Mahatma Gandhi. I detest vivisection with all of my heart, he declared. I despise the unjustifiable killing of innocent people in the name of so-called science and humanity, and I consider all scientific advancements tainted with innocent blood to be of no import.

According to Dr. Ankita Pandey, science policy advisor for PETA India, "medical and pharmacology students deserve the best training possible, and that means using contemporary simulation tools rather than torturing and killing animals in barbaric and antiquated experiments." "PETA India is inspiring educators to adopt the morals of the Father of the Nation with the best non-animal technology and apply for the free software in order to improve student learning."

The programme will assist in replacing studies in which animals may be made to ingest or swallow chemicals, be purposefully infected with diseases, or be maimed before being murdered by suffocation or neck dislocation.

Following initiatives by PETA India, forward-thinking scientists, and others, the Medical Council of India (now the National Medical Commission) and Pharmacy Council of India forbade the use of animals to train undergraduate medical and pharmacy students, favouring non-animal techniques instead. The University Grants Commission also banned the use of animal dissection in life sciences and zoology courses. The National Medical Commission updated its recommendations for postgraduate pharmacology curricula in 2022, advising the use of a number of non-animal teaching and training techniques and removing the requirement for some common laboratory experiments using animals.

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 violate their principles. In addition, computer software programmes can be used repeatedly, which saves time and money and helps maintain ecological balance by sparing animals’ lives.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.