Southern Illinois University: End the Use of Pigs in Emergency Medicine Residency Program: An All Creatures Action Alert

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" ~Mohandas Gandhi
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Originally Posted: July 16, 2013

Southern Illinois University: End the Use of Pigs in Emergency Medicine Residency Program

FROM Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)

ACTION

Please take a minute to ask Southern Illinois University School of Medicine dean Kevin Dorsey, M.D., Ph.D., to replace the use of pigs in the school’s emergency medicine residency program with validated human-based training methods. Points:

Please replace the use of pigs in Southern Illinois University’s emergency residency program.
Anatomical differences between pigs and humans render this type of training suboptimal.
Since SIU exclusively employed nonanimal methods until this year, there is no justification for this new animal use.

Sign an online petition (copy/paste URL into your browser):
http://secure2.convio.net/pcrm/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=609

And/or better yet, make direct contact:

Kevin Dorsey
Dean and Provost
School of Medicine
Southern Illionis University
Carbondale, IL 62901
(217) 545-3625
[email protected]

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

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.

Thank you for everything you do for animals!

Other information you may find useful for your activism

Find area codes
Find zip codes