[FooSH]

All the people arguing if the dogs were killed for training or for profit are both right.

It's common practice for a someone working for the company, usually involved in the development, to join the surgeon on a few operations when offering a new surgical implant. They work together, in effect they both get training from the experience. If the surgeon feels comfortable with it and thinks it will benefit his or her patients then its sold, so it's a sales pitch as well.

For orthopaedic and minor surgery this is done on a live patients so the surgeon can easily switch back to the old product if needed without too much fuss. It's different with vascular cases, because they are cutting blood supplies to vital organs, every second counts so animal trials are necessary for each surgeon.

I hope this clears some stuff up. I've witness a few of these operations with orthopaedic stuff, never with dogs but I know it goes on.

I'm still not sure why they have to kill them afterword [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]