Cleveland Clinic Ends Animal Use to Train Surgeons
Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection - An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Copyright Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). Used by permission.
October 2020

Previously, the hospital held up to three pig labs per year to teach invasive procedures to its general surgery residents.

The Physicians Committee has learned that Cleveland Clinic has stopped using live animals to train surgeons! Previously, the hospital held up to three pig labs per year to teach invasive procedures to its general surgery residents. We thank you for your continued support, which makes victories like this possible!

Last May, I began corresponding with officials at the hospital, to provide evidence in support of nonanimal training methods, which are exclusively used for training in Cleveland Clinic’s other general surgery residency program at South Pointe Hospital in Ohio. We were thrilled when the hospital’s surgery program director agreed to reassess animal use and determined that nonanimal training methods were best.

In another development, we recently confirmed that the joint Spectrum Health and Michigan State University surgery program in Grand Rapids has also decided to stop using animals to train its surgeons!

Now, Cleveland Clinic and Spectrum Health join the 195 other general surgery programs in the U.S. that use only human-relevant training methods–like human-patient simulators, laparoscopic simulators, virtual reality trainers, and human cadavers.

Your activism and financial support are key to these victories and will ultimately propel us to success through our First, Do No Harm campaign, which will lead to the end of animal use in all medical training programs.

With your support, we will continue to modernize medical training.

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