Animal Testing Weekly!

I have exciting news! Recently, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that it had suspended the use of animals in invasive trauma training courses pending an internal review. Previously, during these courses pigs and goats were shot and stabbed.

California Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard has been a strong leader on this effort, urging the Coast Guard to replace animal use. She even announced the news in a recent op-ed.

But while the Coast Guard is taking a closer look at its practices, the other military services continue to use thousands of animals each year in invasive training courses—even though human-relevant methods exist. But there's a bill in Congress that addresses this issue—the BEST Practices Act.
Please ask your representative to co-sponsor the BEST Practices Act by e-mailing today.

State-of-the-art human-relevant training methods like the Cut Suit (pictured above) can provide better training than the military's current use of goats and pigs.


With your help, we will modernize military medical training and end this cruel animal use. Thank you for your help.


Testing On Animals SUCKS...



Primate in Laboratory

Why is the USDA Shielding Animal Abusers? The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has scrubbed its website of the critical information that PETA relies on to expose abuse, but now we’re working to end that agency’s information blackout. Help us thwart those who are trying to protect animal abusers. DONATE NOW

Mice

Urge the FDA to Support Animal-Free Test Methods. Good news! The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) is exploring the use of animal-free organ-on-a-chip technology rather than experimenting on animals. Let's encourage it to keep up the good work by supporting even more non-animal approaches. CONTACT THE FDA TODAY

Mice with Sepsis

Mice Deliberately Given Severe Infections for Bad Science at the University of Pittsburgh. These mice experience widespread pain, fever, chills, difficulty breathing, and multi-organ failure and eventually become so sick that they're unable to move before "falling over dead." DEMAND A CHANGE 


Last month, John Pippin met with top officials from the University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC) to discuss their continued use of live animals to train emergency medicine residents and other first responders. He presented the overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of human-based training methods—which are exclusively employed by 90 percent of surveyed emergency medicine programs and 99 percent of paramedic training programs.
Toledo Demo
However, it became clear during the course of this discussion that UTMC is not going to allow the prevailing standard of training to influence their teaching methodology. Thus, he is counting on you to help put the pressure exactly where it is needed.

At UTMC, residents are instructed to make incisions into the throat of a live pig and insert a breathing tube, insert needles into the chest and bones, and split open the breastbone in order to access the heart. At the end of each session, the animals who survive the procedures are killed. The university uses 125 pigs per year in its Emergency Skills laboratory to train residents and to provide continuing education credits to emergency first responders.

This animal use is at odds with current standards of practice. Today, 90 percent of surveyed U.S. emergency medicine residency programs (145 of 162) use only nonanimal training methods such as human-based medical simulation, cadavers, and task trainers. And 139 of 140 surveyed paramedic programs use only nonanimal methods. The university already has a $36 million state-of-the-art simulation center—the Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center—that could provide the resources to replace the use of animals.  


Believe it or not, up until only a few years ago, operating on and then killing pigs, goats, and sheep—and even homeless dogs—was a routine part of many medical trauma training courses. Although there are still some institutions that continue to use such archaic methods—hurting and killing animals to train students—in just the last few weeks, PETA's international affiliates' campaigns to end those crude and deadly practices have taken a long stride forward.
In a monumental victory, the U.S. Coast Guard just announced that it has become the first branch of the American military to suspend the shooting, stabbing, and killing of animals in trauma training drills. The Coast Guard will take time to study human simulators and other non-animal training methods that PETA U.S. has recommended. This wonderful news follows pressure from PETA U.S. and its ally, U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, and the Coast Guard has confirmed that the moratorium came into effect after a PETA U.S. eyewitness exposé prompted an official review by the agency.
PETA Australia is also gaining ground in its efforts to end deadly trauma training on animals. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) announced that it, too, is ending its use of animals for trauma training. This decision comes after an extensive, nearly four-year-long campaign by PETA Australia, PETA U.S., and Humane Research Australia, during which thousands of people sent e-mails to RACS officials through online action alerts, more than 100,000 people signed a PETA Australia petition, thought-provoking ads and protests featuring numerous outspoken "pigs" made headlines across Australia, and medical experts from PETA U.S. negotiated with the college.
And, thanks to a donation of simulators from PETA U.S., Bangladesh, Ghana, Jamaica, and Kenya are the latest countries to ban the use of animals in surgical trauma training. We are excited to report that this brings the number of countries that have ended the cruel use of animals for Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) training to 20, sparing thousands of animals every year! While state-of-the-art human-patient simulators are now the standard for ATLS training in many countries, a number of nations have yet to make the switch—often simply because they lack the financial resources to do so. That's why PETA U.S. has donated more than 100 TraumaMan simulators, valued at nearly HKD20 million, to national ATLS training programs around the globe. Since 2014, these donations of innovative simulators—which replicate breathing, bleeding human torsos—have helped replace the use of animals in courses from Panama to Pakistan. PETA's international affiliates are making medical history and moving medical training away from a hideous dependence on animals.
While there is still a great deal of work to be done to end the use of animals in training and experimentation, so much progress in a matter of weeks shows how much caring people can accomplish in making the world a kinder place for animals.