Ask Hartford Hospital to End the Use of Pigs in its ATLS Courses

Wikimedia Commons

BACKGROUND | SOURCE PCRM

Doctors with PCRM joined concerned Connecticut residents on Oct. 24 for a physician-led demonstration to end the unnecessary use of live pigs in Hartford Hospital’s trauma training course.

Protestors carried signs reading, “End Deadly Pig Labs,” “Using Pigs to Teach Human Medicine?” and “Hartford Hospital: Animal Cruelty Doesn’t Save Lives.” Doctors also delivered a petition signed by nearly 500 Connecticut residents urging the use of lifelike human patient simulators instead of anesthetized animals.

Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) training at Hartford Hospital involves cutting into live pigs and practicing emergency medical procedures. After the training session, the animals are killed. Although the animals are anesthetized during the procedures, they endure the trauma of confinement, shipping, preparation, manipulation, and death.

Nonanimal education methods are exclusively used by 98 percent of ATLS programs in the United States, including Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, and all of the 23 Canadian facilities providing ATLS training. Hartford Hospital already owns the simulator validated for this training and could immediately replace its use of animals.

“Cutting into living animals is a substandard way to teach emergency procedures that will be performed on humans,” says Connecticut surgeon Marjorie Cramer, M.D., F.A.C.S. “Hartford Hospital should use state-of-the-art, human-centered methods for all trauma courses.”


PETITION

Click HERE for petition


WHOM TO CONTACT

Click HERE for online form (select appropriate target, such as General Information)


SUBJECT

Please End the Use of Live Animals in Hartford Hospital’s ATLS Courses


SAMPLE LETTER

I am writing to ask that you immediately replace the use of live pigs in your Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) courses. This practice is cruel and outdated. In fact, your hospital is among only 2 percent of ATLS programs in the United States and Canada that continue to use live animals for this training. Your hospital already owns the American College of Surgeons-approved TraumaMan System, so there is no justification for the continued animal use. Please end this cruel and unnecessary practice immediately.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent appeal.

NAME

pigs are pigs,
but man is
the swine:(

Karen Lyons Kalmenson