Help End the Use of Live Animals in Emergency Medical Training at the University of Toledo
Action Alert from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Physicians Committee (PCRM)
November 2014

ACTION

We need your help to stop the use of animals in a training program at the University of Toledo (UT) in Ohio. Please ask Dr. Cooper to end this educationally substandard practice by replacing the use of animals with human-based methods.

Sign an online petition.

AND/OR better yet, make direct contact:

Christopher J. Cooper, MD
Heart and Vascular Center
3000 Arlington Avenue
Toledo, OH 43614
Phone (800) 321-8383 (leave a message for Dr. Cooper)
Complete online contact form

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

SimMan medical trainingWe need your help to stop the use of animals in a training program at the University of Toledo (UT) in Ohio. On Monday, with the support of local physicians, the Physicians Committee filed a complaint with the United States Department of Agriculture explaining that UT is violating the federal Animal Welfare Act by using live animals to teach emergency medicine residents. Please join our effort to put an end to this substandard practice by e-mailing the dean of the UT College of Medicine and Life Sciences, Christopher J. Cooper, M.D.

Despite the widespread availability and implementation of nonanimal methods, emergency medicine training at UT involves making incisions into a pig’s throat to insert a breathing tube, inserting needles into bones, and splitting the breastbone in order to access the heart. After the training sessions, the animals are killed. The university uses 125 pigs per year, the most we have seen for any civilian program of its kind.

This animal use is at odds with current standards of practice in the United States. Only 14 percent of surveyed emergency medicine residencies (18 of 132) in the country use animals. The remaining 86 percent of programs use human-based medical simulation, cadavers, and other human-relevant methods. UT even admits in its animal use protocol that studies “concluded that the humane methods were adequate to achieve the desired skills.” The university already has a state-of-the-art simulation center—the Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center—that could provide the resources and simulation capabilities to replace the use of animals. 

Here are some talking points:

  • Please replace the use of pigs in the University of Toldeo’s emergency medicine residency program with human-based simulators.
  • Eighty-six percent of emergency medicine residency programs in the United States teach the same procedures without using animals.
  • UT admits in its animal use protocol that published studies “concluded that the humane methods were adequate to achieve the desired skills.”
  • UT has a state-of-the-art simulation center that if fully utilized could replace the use of animals immediately.  

Thank you for everything you do for animals!


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