For Rapid Launch:
November 4, 2022
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
Memphis, Tenn. – Earlier right this moment, a PETA supporter confronted College of Tennessee Well being Sciences Heart (UTHSC) Chancellor Peter Buckley at his meet-and-greet occasion on the C.P.J Mooney Memorial Library and urged him to finish the varsity’s invasive emergency medical coaching procedures on reside pigs. Earlier than being detained by police, the activist demanded that the chancellor compel the varsity to change to the superior, animal-free, human simulators used within the overwhelming majority of comparable emergency medical coaching drills worldwide. Images and video footage can be found right here.
The coaching periods in query contain inducing collapsed lungs, chopping into an artery to induce bleeding, and cracking open the ribs if resuscitating the pigs fails. The animals who survive the painful drills are killed.
The activist’s motion got here after greater than 87,000 PETA supporters wrote to management at UTHSC and its School of Medication (UTCOM) to demand an finish to the mutilation of animals in emergency medical coaching. Amongst different marketing campaign actions, PETA despatched letters to Buckley and College of Tennessee (UT) System President Randy Boyd and a PETA consultant spoke on the UT Board of Trustees assembly on October 28. Emmy winner and star of Babe James Cromwell additionally despatched a letter to Buckley urging him to “finish this barbaric use of animals.” After listening to from PETA, UTCOM’s hospital accomplice, Erlanger Well being System, introduced a brand new coverage banning its employees—in addition to its emergency medevac supplier, LIFE FORCE—from taking part within the live-animal medical coaching drills at UTCOM.
Earlier on February 4, Buckley replied to PETA in writing, saying that he would “verify into this going ahead,” however he has but to take motion to finish the maiming of pigs in these workouts.
“The College of Tennessee’s mutilation of delicate pigs in crude emergency medical drills is a bloody stain on its status,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA urges UTHSC Chancellor Peter Buckley to do proper by college students and animals by embracing superior, animal-free, human-relevant coaching strategies.”
PETA—whose motto reads, partially, that “animals are usually not ours to experiment on”—factors to an inner e-mail it obtained during which UTCOM management acknowledges that the general public’s discovery of its animal drills “shall be very damaging to the School of Medication and [its] credibility.”
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra info on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org or comply with the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.