Army Medical Center Ends Cruel Ferret Labs
Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

From People fror the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
August 2013

This compassionate, medically sound decision aligns its program with the overwhelmingly majority of its peer facilities and brings it into compliance with Department of Defense guidelines that require that non-animal training methods be used when available.

I have an exciting victory to report in our campaign to end the military's war on animals!

After more than three years of pressure from PETA, Joint Base Lewis-McChord's Madigan Army Medical Center near Tacoma, Washington, has confirmed that it has completely replaced its cruel use of ferrets for pediatric intubation training with modern simulators.

PETA's campaign—which included e-mail appeals from more than 60,000 people like you, pleas from civilian and military medical experts, complaints to military authorities, and even a public banner drop on an overpass near the base in Tacoma—prompted Madigan's thoughtful new leadership to undertake an internal review that confirmed that lifelike infant-patient simulators can be used exclusively to teach intubation skills.

Intubation training on ferrets requires repeatedly forcing hard plastic tubes down the animals' delicate windpipes and can cause bleeding, swelling, pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death. Studies have repeatedly shown that pediatric intubation training on simulators better prepares trainees to treat children than these crude animal laboratories do.

Madigan's compassionate, medically sound decision aligns its program with the overwhelmingly majority of its peer facilities and brings it into compliance with Department of Defense guidelines that require that non-animal training methods be used when available.

In recent years, PETA has also convinced the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, the Naval Medical Center San Diego, and many civilian facilities to the end their animal-based intubation exercises. The Tripler Army Medical Center, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and William Beaumont Army Medical Center also use only simulation methods for pediatric intubation training, as do more than 98 percent of U.S. pediatric residency programs.

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