Hopkins’ Use Of Live Pigs For Surgery Under Fire: Please take action

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Help End the Pig Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine


From WBAL ABC

Complaint Filed Against School For Teaching Methods

BALTIMORE — Johns Hopkins Hospital is coming under fire for the way it uses live animals to teach students about surgery.

Several doctors on Thursday filed a complaint that asks Baltimore to make Hopkins stop using live pigs as guinea pigs, saying it’s animal cruelty.

At Hopkins, the sedated live pigs are used to teach medical students how to perform surgery. After the surgery, the pigs are killed.

“Hopkins is clearly out of step with the 21st century treatment of animals,” said Dr. Martin Wasserman, who was Maryland’s health secretary in the 1990s.


From WBAL | Hopkins’ Use Of Live Pigs For Surgery Under Fire

He and his wife, Barbara, both of whom are Hopkins-educated doctors, have formally requested Baltimore state’s attorney Gregg Bernstein to stop the use of pigs at Hopkins while the method is investigated.

“It’s not research. It is a clear violation of the animal cruelty statues of this state,” Martin Wasserman said.

In filing the complaint, the Wassermans are teaming up with the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. The group obtained a video of the surgery from a class at Uniformed Services University, a military medical school in Bethesda that’s also mentioned in the complaint.

But the university’s School of Medicine is defending the method.

In a statement, Johns Hopkins said the use of live animals in medical teaching at the School of Medicine is rigorously reviewed on a regular basis by the Johns Hopkins University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

The statement said the university complies with U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations and with the public health service policy on humane care and use of laboratory animals.

Hopkins added that using a live pig is medically and anatomically the closest students can get to live human surgery.

“I think the difference is that there are alternatives to teaching students certain techniques,” Barbara Wasserman said. “It’s certainly more humane than sacrificing animals.”

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is one of only seven medical schools in the U.S. and Canada that uses live animals to train students.

Doctors said an alternative to using pigs is simulated surgeries, where students use artificial human bodies. Hopkins and the hospital in Bethesda said they also use that method.

Bernstein’s office said Thursday that it received the complaint but didn’t know how it will handle the case.


From PCRM

Please click HERE to contact Dean Edward D. Miller, M.D., and Chair of the Department of Surgery, Julie A. Freischlag, M.D., at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and politely urge them to end the practice of using live animals as teaching tools. The alternatives are cheaper, more effective, and more humane. There is no longer any justification for killing animals in the name of medical education.

Message Text

I am writing to ask that you immediately end the use of live pigs in the Johns Hopkins University’s surgery clerkship. The use of live animals in medical school curricula is cruel and outdated. Johns Hopkins is one of only seven medical schools in the United States and Canada that continue to use live animals for training. Johns Hopkins already has a state-of-the-art simulation center that can easily prove nonanimal training methods, so there is no justification for the continued use of live animals. Please end this cruel and unnecessary practice immediately.

See More …

• Dissection | Testing
• Compassion
• Cruelty-Free
• Animal Wrongs

this is a much used but
truthful one line:
pigs may be pigs, but man is the swine:(