Here's some exciting news from PETA's home region of Hampton Roads, Virginia: Following more than two years of urging from PETA, the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) has completely replaced its cruel and crude use of ferrets for teaching lifesaving intubation skills to physicians and others with more modern and effective simulators.

Joining PETA in calling for an end to this cruel ferret laboratory were several military and civilian medical experts with firsthand knowledge about the superiority of simulators, including a pediatrician who is a former commander of NMCP. Previously, ferrets had hard plastic tubes forced down their delicate windpipes as often as 10 times per session—a procedure that can cause bleeding, swelling, pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death.

NMCP joins the Naval Medical Center San Diego, Tripler Army Medical Center, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences—as well as more than 90 percent of pediatric residency programs nationwide—that have already ended the use of cats and ferrets for intubation training in favor of superior human simulators. 

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How You Can Help Animals in Intubation Laboratories

Please help persuade St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis to replace painful intubation training exercises on cats and ferrets with humane and superior non-animal methods.

Have you ever had a breathing tube inserted during a hospital stay only to have a painful sore throat for days afterward? Imagine having that same breathing tube shoved down your throat 10 times in a row—by untrained hands—every few months for up to three years! That was the fate of dozens of cats used in archaic intubation training exercises at the Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) and Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

After NMCSD heard from PETA and Nationwide heard from PETA and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, both hospitals have agreed to scrap the cruel exercises on cats and instead use only advanced human-patient simulators that replicate human anatomy and better prepare trainees to accurately perform the procedure on human patients.  
 

 
Unfortunately, cats are still suffering bleeding, swelling, pain, and scarring from intubation training exercises at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Please e-mail hospital officials and urge them follow the lead of NMCSD, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Texas Tech, Heartland Regional Medical Center, Primary Children’s Medical Center, and hundreds of other facilities and replace animals with superior and humane non-animal training methods.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow