Washington University in St. Louis Ends Some Cruel Cat Lab Training
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
May 2013

[UPDATE June 12, 2013: The University is using cats in OTHER training courses.]

[Ed. Note: To help end abuse of cats in other labs, visit Tell Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to STOP Funding Cat Experiments]

From People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
May 2013

WUSTL joins Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Naval Medical Center San Diego, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Primary Children's Medical Center, the University of Michigan, Heartland Regional Medical Center, and many other facilities that now use modern simulators for intubation training instead of animals.

Following an extensive campaign, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) confirmed this morning that it has ended the use of cats in painful and crude intubation training drills and is joining the hundreds of other facilities across the country that teach people to save babies' lives by exclusively using sophisticated lifelike simulators.

The change in WUSTL's program comes just six weeks after PETA released undercover video footage of cats having hard tubes forced down their throats in the school's Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course, offered in conjunction with St. Louis Children's Hospital. WUSTL was the last facility in the country that PETA knows of that was still using animals for the PALS course.

Following PETA's recent exposé, TV icon and Missouri native Bob Barker wrote to WUSTL to offer to purchase $75,000 in simulation equipment if the school would end the cruel use of cats. PETA also filed a complaint with the Missouri attorney general alleging that misleading claims that the school made on its website in defense of the course violated consumer-protection laws.

PETA's campaign to urge WUSTL to end its use of cats began in 2008 and has included protests, pleas from medical experts, ad campaigns, and tens of thousands of e-mails and phone calls from PETA supporters.

WUSTL joins Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Naval Medical Center San Diego, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Primary Children's Medical Center, the University of Michigan, Heartland Regional Medical Center, and many other facilities that PETA has convinced to use modern simulators for intubation training instead of animals.


Return to Animal Rights Articles
Read more at Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection