While we have had many victories in our work to modernize other medical specialties like emergency medicine and pediatrics, this is our first confirmed victory specific to surgery programs.
The University of Virginia (UVA) just informed the Physicians Committee
that the school has stopped using live animals to train surgeons! While we
have had many victories in our work to modernize other medical specialties
like emergency medicine and pediatrics, this is our first confirmed victory
specific to surgery programs. We expect many more to follow—until training
on animals is truly a thing of the past. Thank you for making this possible!
Last December, after first attempting to communicate privately with UVA, we
launched our public campaign by filing a federal complaint. The university
was using pigs to teach invasive procedures to its general surgery
residents. If the animals survived the procedures, they were killed
following the training session.
UVA now joins the 76% (196 of 259) of surveyed U.S. general surgery programs
that exclusively use human-relevant training methods, such as human-patient
simulators, laparoscopic simulators, virtual reality trainers, and human
cadavers.
Return to Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection