Not a Single One Will Be Killed
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Physicians Committee
May 2014

The Physicians Committee’s efforts led to SIU postponing the use of pigs several times. Through a state-level Freedom of Information Act request, we JUST confirmed that this animal lab is officially cancelled!

I am very excited to be able to share with you a special victory for animals in Illinois. Just days ago, the Physicians Committee confirmed that Southern Illinois University (SIU) cancelled its plans to kill pigs in emergency medicine residency training following a year of pressure from us and our supporters. We stopped the school before a single animal could be killed.

SIU planned to start using pigs to train residents last summer after years of using human-based methods. When the Physicians Committee learned of this, we immediately jumped into action. When the university insisted on moving ahead with the training on pigs, we filed a federal complaint with the United States Department of Agriculture in July 2013, and in October many of our supporters (including retired surgeon Marjorie Cramer, M.D., and three pot-bellied pigs) stood outside SIU's medical school campus in Springfield, to protest this cruel use of pigs.

The Physicians Committee’s efforts led to SIU postponing the use of pigs several times. Through a state-level Freedom of Information Act request, we JUST confirmed that this animal lab is officially cancelled!

In this training, residents would have made incisions near the pigs' eyes to drain previously injected fluid, made incisions between the ribs to insert a tube into the chest cavities, and surgically opened the animals’ chests. After the course, the pigs would have been killed.

SIU joins the 86 percent of surveyed emergency medicine residency programs in the United States that view nonanimal methods as not only more humane but educationally superior.

Please help us continue to make medical education more human-focused. Tell the rector of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada to replace the use of piglets in the school's pediatrics residency program. See Action Alert: Tell Laval University to Replace Use of Pigs.

Thank you again for all of your support. Because of you, the Physicians Committee continues to secure victories like this—a win for animals and for the future patients of today’s emergency medicine residents.

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