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

earthfirst / CC

Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning actor—and animal defender extraordinaire—Woody Harrelson might have played the laid-back Carson Wells in No Country for Old Men, but he was almost as mad as his controversial character Mickey Knox when he learned about deadly medical training exercises involving cats at Texas Tech.

Homeless cats at the Odessa animal shelter—just a stone's throw away from the star's birthplace in Midland—are purchased by the university's Health Sciences Center and then abused and killed in medical training exercises. Faculty members and trainees force plastic tubes down the cats' throats and stab needles into their chests for procedures that invariably result in pain and death for the animals. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association exclusively endorse the use of modern, human-like manikins—not live animals—for this kind of training in their courses.

Here's part of Woody's letter to Texas Tech President John Baldwin:

Cheers to Woody for speaking out against these cruel exercises. Wood you (ouch) join him in protesting these cruel, outdated procedures?

Written by Karin Bennett