Did you hear they’re replacing laboratory rats with lawyers? It seems there are some things rats just won’t do.
Okay, that’s a joke, and perhaps not a good one. But sometimes truth is stranger than humor and as it turns out, rats are being replaced, not with lawyers, but with plastic.
The European chemical giant Solvay is selling life-sized rats made of polyvinyl chloride – PVC – to replace live rats used in medical training. Solvay’s PVC rats are anatomically correct to the Nth degree, with life-like skin, organs and blood vessels. Solvay says the development of the plastic rat will be a great boon for living, breathing rats. The average doctor goes through 200 rats during her or his training, the average medical technician runs through 100. Medical personnel learn basic procedures on rats, everything from suturing to organ transplants to reconnecting blood vessels.
Obviously, these are not the cheap plastic rats you can buy in a novelty shop and use to scare your friends. These rats are difficult and expensive to make, costing Solvay over $300 a rat. Solvay, however, sells the rats for less than half of what it costs to make them. The company says it intends to sell 3,000 PVC rats a year and lose $150 per rat. If you smell a rat here, you’re not alone.
Why would Solvay go to such trouble to make a plastic rat and then plan to lose a half million dollars a year selling them? Two reasons – the rats are made of PVC and they’re used to train medical personnel.
Makers of PVC have run into a few medical problems in the past few years. Nearly one-quarter of all plastic medical products are made with PVC, including most I-V bags and tubing. To make PVC medical products soft and pliable, manufacturers use large quantities of additives. The most common additive, DEHP, has been found to leach from I-V bags and tubing into solutions, blood products and the human body.
Feature this: you’re lying in a hospital, recovering from surgery and the I-V bag in your arm is leaching Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate into your bloodstream. I don’t want it happening to me, and I don’t think you want it happening to you. The situation is particularly grim for premature infants, hemophiliacs, dialysis patients and people with compromised immune systems. Some medications, such as the anti-cancer drug Taxol, accelerate the leaching of DEHP. Increased exposure to DEHP has been linked, among other things, to cancer in laboratory animals.
So now the circle is complete. If you have cancer, you may have to go to the hospital or clinic to receive a dose of an anti-cancer medication delivered to you through a PVC tube that leaches a compound known to CAUSE cancer in laboratory animals. At the very same moment, the company that makes the PVC tube that leaches the compound known to cause cancer in laboratory animals, is showering itself in glory because it is losing a half million dollars a year to SAVE the lives of laboratory rats, by replacing them with rats made from the self-same, cancer-causing PVC. I want to know if anyone involved is interested in saving YOUR life, or are you just there to provide the cash that keeps this whole carnival in motion?
Solvay’s plastic rat scam is a pathetic attempt to appear animal-friendly while sucking up to future doctors. Like I said, there’s some things even a rat won’t do.
You Dirty Rat
Did you hear they’re replacing laboratory rats with lawyers? It seems there are some things rats just won’t do.
Okay, that’s a joke, and perhaps not a good one. But sometimes truth is stranger than humor and as it turns out, rats are being replaced, not with lawyers, but with plastic.
The European chemical giant Solvay is selling life-sized rats made of polyvinyl chloride – PVC – to replace live rats used in medical training. Solvay’s PVC rats are anatomically correct to the Nth degree, with life-like skin, organs and blood vessels. Solvay says the development of the plastic rat will be a great boon for living, breathing rats. The average doctor goes through 200 rats during her or his training, the average medical technician runs through 100. Medical personnel learn basic procedures on rats, everything from suturing to organ transplants to reconnecting blood vessels.
Obviously, these are not the cheap plastic rats you can buy in a novelty shop and use to scare your friends. These rats are difficult and expensive to make, costing Solvay over $300 a rat. Solvay, however, sells the rats for less than half of what it costs to make them. The company says it intends to sell 3,000 PVC rats a year and lose $150 per rat. If you smell a rat here, you’re not alone.
Why would Solvay go to such trouble to make a plastic rat and then plan to lose a half million dollars a year selling them? Two reasons – the rats are made of PVC and they’re used to train medical personnel.
Makers of PVC have run into a few medical problems in the past few years. Nearly one-quarter of all plastic medical products are made with PVC, including most I-V bags and tubing. To make PVC medical products soft and pliable, manufacturers use large quantities of additives. The most common additive, DEHP, has been found to leach from I-V bags and tubing into solutions, blood products and the human body.
Feature this: you’re lying in a hospital, recovering from surgery and the I-V bag in your arm is leaching Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate into your bloodstream. I don’t want it happening to me, and I don’t think you want it happening to you. The situation is particularly grim for premature infants, hemophiliacs, dialysis patients and people with compromised immune systems. Some medications, such as the anti-cancer drug Taxol, accelerate the leaching of DEHP. Increased exposure to DEHP has been linked, among other things, to cancer in laboratory animals.
So now the circle is complete. If you have cancer, you may have to go to the hospital or clinic to receive a dose of an anti-cancer medication delivered to you through a PVC tube that leaches a compound known to CAUSE cancer in laboratory animals. At the very same moment, the company that makes the PVC tube that leaches the compound known to cause cancer in laboratory animals, is showering itself in glory because it is losing a half million dollars a year to SAVE the lives of laboratory rats, by replacing them with rats made from the self-same, cancer-causing PVC. I want to know if anyone involved is interested in saving YOUR life, or are you just there to provide the cash that keeps this whole carnival in motion?
Solvay’s plastic rat scam is a pathetic attempt to appear animal-friendly while sucking up to future doctors. Like I said, there’s some things even a rat won’t do.