Ask Southern Illinois University to End the Use of Pigs in its Emergency Medicine Residency Program

Please click HERE to take action

Source PCRM

We need your help to stop the killing of pigs by Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU). Until this month, SIU used the same human-based training methods employed across the country by 85 percent of surveyed emergency medicine residency programs in the United States.

Last week, PCRM filed a complaint with the United States Department of Agriculture, explaining that SIU is violating the federal Animal Welfare Act by using live pigs to teach emergency medicine resident physicians. Please help this effort by calling and
e-mailing SIU School of Medicine dean Kevin Dorsey, M.D., Ph.D., today. The training sessions are scheduled to take place this month.

In the emergency medicine residency program at SIU, residents make an incision of the eyelid to drain previously injected fluid, then make an incision between ribs to insert a tube into the chest cavity, then surgically open the chest, and finally make an incision in the throat and insert a breathing tube. The pigs are then killed. Nonanimal training methods are widely used by residency programs across the country, because nonanimal training is the best and most effective training available.

Here is Dr. Dorsey’s telephone number and some talking points when you call his office. Please be polite and encouraging. 

Kevin Dorsey, M.D., Ph.D., Dean
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Phone: 217-545-3625

Talking points:

• I am calling to ask Dr. Dorsey to please stop the use of pigs in the school’s emergency medicine residency program before it begins.
• Since Southern Illinois exclusively employed nonanimal methods until this year, there is no justification for this new animal use since it is not the most effective training available.
• Eighty-five percent of surveyed emergency medicine residency programs in the United States – including Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and four major training programs in Illinois – do not use animals.

After you call, please e-mail Dr. Dorsey and ask him to replace the use of animals in SIU’s emergency medicine residency program.

You can read our complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture here (PDF).

Thank you for your help.

dear humans,
pigs are pigs
but man is the swine.
why is it that you
are so unkind.
we have feelings,
real sensations,
humans stop
tormenting
ALL animal nations

signed,
the pigs

Karen Lyons Kalmenson