Written by PETA
Lily Tomlin is always looking for signs of intelligent life, but she hasn't yet found it in the University of Michigan's (UM) survival flight course. The Detroit native recently wrote to UM to ask its officials to stop allowing cats and pigs to be abused in cruel and deadly flight training exercises and to replace the animals with advanced human patient simulators instead. Human patient simulators are used across the country to train flight nurses, and UM already uses simulators to teach the same skills in other courses.
In a letter to UM President Mary Sue Coleman, Tomlin writes, "Having trainees jam hard tubes down cats' throats, cut holes into pigs' throats and chests, and stab needles into the animals' bones and the tissue surrounding their hearts is simply unjustifiable when modern and superior alternatives are available."
Are you listening, UM? Don't make Lily go all Ernestine on you.
Wonder why Lily is so upset? The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recently obtained this video of a deadly pig lab at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, one of the schools they are urging to modernize its curriculum and replace animal use.
Coleman also received a surprise visit recently from PETA members wearing cat and pig costumes to protest an awards ceremony at which she was being recognized. The animals don't get a break, so why should UM?
Join PETA, Lily Tomlin, Iggy Pop, UM's student government, and others in urging UM to stop killing cats and pigs in crude and cruel training laboratories.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
Our motto – animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment – translates into a belief that it is wrong to experiment on animals for the same reason that it is wrong to experiment on the poor, the mentally disabled, or the institutionalized. That they are smaller, weaker, or less able to communicate in ways that we can understand does not give us the right to barter their lives away. It is not necessary or ethical for nonconsenting people or animals to be tortured and killed for “the common good.”
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If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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