Primary Children's Medical Center Replaces Animals With Modern Simulators Following Pressure From PETA and the Community
For Immediate Release:
February 10, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 757-622-7382
Salt Lake City — In the wake of an intense PETA campaign, Primary Children's Medical Center (PCMC) has announced that it will no longer use cats—lost, stray, and abandoned animals obtained from the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter—in a cruel and archaic training exercise during its annual Current Concepts in Neonatal and Pediatric Transport conference. For years, the conference, which is cosponsored by the University of Utah, has included an intubation training exercise in which cats have hard plastic tubes repeatedly forced down their throats—a procedure that can cause bleeding, swelling, collapsed lungs, and even death. This year's conference will use only modern infant simulators, which are widely recommended by leading medical organizations and have been shown to better prepare trainees to treat sick and injured children.
"By dropping this cruel and crude animal laboratory, Primary Children's Medical Center is not only sparing homeless cats from pain and suffering but also ensuring that the doctors treating Utah's children get the best training possible," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo.
Over the course of one week, more than 25,000 people responded to PETA's action alert and e-mailed PCMC staff to call for an end to the cruel exercises. Hundreds of PETA supporters posted comments on PCMC's Facebook wall—which prompted the hospital to shut down the page entirely—and one Salt Lake City vegan baker hand-delivered a cake to PCMC's CEO. On February 9, when hundreds of PETA supporters called PCMC to express their concern over the upcoming conference, hospital personnel told them that PCMC would be canceling the animal laboratory.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Emergency Nurses Association, and the American Heart Association—which sponsor the most widely taught neonatal and infant life-support courses in the country—endorse the exclusive use of simulation technology, not live animals, for intubation training. Unlike animal-based methods, this technology allows participants to practice procedures repeatedly on models that accurately replicate human anatomy.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.
