Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) is the last facility in the country that still abuses cats for Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) training, in defiance of modern science and ethics. Now PETA has obtained alarming undercover video footage of cats being subjected to these cruel training exercises in a recent WUSTL PALS course conducted in conjunction with St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Despite the availability of superior, lifelike simulators, which are used instead of animals at all of the more than 1,000 other PALS training facilities in the U.S., WUSTL continues to lock nine cats in its laboratories. Several times a year, trainees repeatedly force hard plastic tubes down the animals' delicate windpipes in a crude attempt to learn to intubate human infants.

A Real-Life Horror Movie

The video shows unskilled trainees struggling for several minutes to intubate two helpless cats named Elliott and Jessie, botching the attempts to shove tubes down their windpipes and mishandling metal instruments in ways that could break the cats' teeth. As several participants in the video note, the inadequately anesthetized cats even begin to wake up during the procedure.

A WUSTL veterinarian is seen discussing how each cat is subjected to as many as 15 intubations each session, even though studies show that intubating animals more than five times per session can cause pain and trauma. The veterinarian and course leader also admit that some cats' windpipes are injured during the exercise, which can cause potentially fatal bleeding, swelling, scarring, and collapsed lungs. Each of the cats held captive at WUSTL is subjected to this miserable procedure up to four times a year.

Even the American Heart Association (AHA), which created the curriculum and sponsors the PALS course, confirmed to PETA last month, "We do not endorse or require the use of animals during the AHA-PALS training because of advances and availability of simulation mannequins." 

What You Can Do

Please urge officials at WUSTL and St. Louis Children's Hospital to stop causing cats to suffer for intubation training and to use effective, non-animal training methods instead.

Memorial Day is an occasion to remember all those who have died in the service of their country. Since the end of the draft, the U.S. has boasted about our all-volunteer armed forces. But not all those who have served have been volunteers—and many of our military casualties have worn fur or fins instead of fatigues.

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With the help of its members and supporters, PETA has brought an end to many of the cruel and lethal practices formerly inflicted on animals by military organizations. Because of these victories, ferrets, for instance, are no longer tortured in intubation experiments at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, dogs and cats aren't wounded in trauma training, and monkeys won't be forced to endure drug overdoses at the army's Aberdeen Proving Ground. But there is still work to be done.

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Please join PETA in honoring those animals who have given their lives—though unnecessarily and under duress—in U.S. military operations by assuring that more animals like them will be spared from misery and death:

• The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) stabs, cuts the limbs off, shoots, and mutilates goats and pigs in deadly and archaic training exercises for medics and soldiers, even though superior non-animal methods exist and are used in nearly every civilian hospital and in many military trauma hospitals.
• In other military tests, animals have been poisoned, irradiated, infected, burned, and blown up in order to (poorly) simulate the effects of warfare on humans.
• Other animals die on the front lines—including dogs deployed with combat troops, dolphins and sea lions used as "lookouts," birds exploited as early detectors for chemical and biological weapons, and rats forced into mine detection. Even the animals who survive their "tours of duty" can suffer for years afterward.
• Sonar equipment tested—and proposed for implementation—by the U.S. Navy has caused often-lethal hemorrhages, embolisms, and nervous system pressure in whales and dolphins.
• More than 90 desert tortoises died when they were ill-advisedly relocated from their homes on land near California's Fort Irwin so that the Army could conduct war games there. Fortunately, further relocation was suspended before more of these endangered animals died.

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Animals don't recognize differences between countries, and they don't start wars. One good way to observe Memorial Day is to send a message to the DoD asking officials to protect our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the line of fire—and leave animals out of it.

St. Louis drivers who stop to fill up their tanks will get an eyeful of Washington University in St. Louis' cruelty to cats. PETA has placed hard-hitting ads on top of the pumps at seven gas stations near the campus to show the university's students, faculty, and alumni that the school uses cats like most of us use cars—as equipment.

Instead of using modern human-patient simulators in the intubation training exercises it holds in conjunction with St. Louis Children's Hospital, trainees are asked to repeatedly force hard plastic tubes down cats' and ferrets' throats, causing their delicate windpipes to bleed, swell, and scar. Cats can even die as a result of the injuries sustained during this traumatic procedure.

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Drivers may pull into the gas stations lamenting "pain at the pump," but they'll leave disgusted by the pain that Washington University in St. Louis is inflicting on cats. And PETA added more fuel to the fire with similar ads in newspapers and online.

If the school wants to truly honor its namesake, George Washington, who had nine companion animals at the White House, it should call off the cruel cat laboratory and switch to the modern simulators already in use at nearly every other similar facility in the country.

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After more than a year of campaigning by PETA and supporters—and a day after the release of a shocking PETA exposé—the University of Michigan (U-M) announced that it has ended the use of cats in its Survival Flight intubation training laboratory.

More than 100,000 people—including Michigan natives Iggy Pop and Lily Tomlin—called on U-M to replace crude and cruel live-animal laboratories with more humane and effective human simulators, which are already used for other U-M courses. The U-M student group Michigan Animal Rights Society led demonstrations in support of the effort, the student assembly passed a resolution urging the school to end the laboratories, and the student newspaper editorial board came out in favor of replacing animals with simulators. PETA supporters even jammed university circuit boards with phone calls to protest the Survival Flight animal laboratories.

U-M says that it still plans to harm and kill pigs to teach other skills in the Survival Flight training course, and PETA will continue to push the school to replace all animal use with simulators that are already available on campus.

Of course, this victory would not have been possible without the help of our supporters. Help us keep up the momentum by clicking here to urge St. Louis Children's Hospital to join U-M and nearly every other facility in the country by replacing the use of animals with simulators for intubation training.

He was a pretty, healthy, brown tabby cat when his guardians took him to a Michigan animal shelter in the hope of finding him a new home. But a heartless shelter director, a shady animal dealer, and a university hell-bent on abusing animals in crude and painful medical training exercises took away his chance at a happy ending.

Knowing full well that he would end up in a lab, the staff at Gratiot County Animal Shelter turned the cat over to notorious Class B animal dealer R&R Research, which in turn sold him to the University of Michigan (U-M). There, he was given the ID number 8269 and tormented in Survival Flight training labs for nurses by having hard plastic tubes repeatedly shoved down his delicate windpipe. A few days later, when U-M was done abusing 8269, they killed him. Another cat who was subjected to this cruel intubation laboratory, 8312, had been obtained from someone who gave her away "free to a good home." The cat was illegally acquired by R&R before being sold to U-M.

The stories of 8269 and the other cats killed by U-M were uncovered when PETA obtained records from Gratiot County and U-M. They reveal that U-M officials—including the director of the Survival Flight program—have shamelessly lied to the public by repeatedly stating in a newspaper opinion column, comments to the media, and official statements that the cats used in the archaic Survival Flight lab are always adopted out afterward.

While we were shocked to learn about U-M's illicit relationship with one of the most despicable animal dealers in the country and to discover that U-M has been blatantly lying about the fate of the cats, it really shouldn't have come as any surprise. U-M officials have been misleadingly claiming for a year that modern human-patient simulators can't replace the cat laboratories, even though these simulators are already used in the place of animals to teach intubation to doctors and nurses in other courses at U-M.

You can help prevent more cats from being betrayed like 8269 by clicking here to e-mail U-M officials and demanding that they replace the use of cats in these labs with the superior human-patient simulators that the school already owns.

Lackland Air Force Base in Texas is one of a tiny minority of facilities in the U.S. that still torments animals in outdated, cruel, and ineffective intubation training exercises for nurses and pediatric residents. Even though superior and sophisticated simulators that replicate human anatomy and physiology and that better prepare trainees to intubate children are widely used across the country, Lackland insists on abusing live ferrets instead. Trainees force hard plastic tubes down the ferrets' delicate windpipes as many as six times each session in a procedure that can cause bleeding, swelling, pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death.

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PETA, along with several military medical experts, has filed a complaint with the U.S. Army Medical Command and the Air Force surgeon general on the grounds that Lackland's animal intubation laboratory likely violates Joint Services Army Regulation 40-33, which requires that non-animal methods be used for training whenever they are available. More than 90 percent of U.S. pediatric residency programs like Lackland's—including those at other military facilities—use only modern infant simulators for intubation training.

Lackland's training methods show a lack of compassion for animals and provide doctors and nurses with inferior training. You can send a polite e-mail to Lackland's Brig. Gen. Leonard Patrick and ask him to end the use of animals for intubation training —for everyone's benefit.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow