PETA Campaign Prompts Washington University/St. Louis Children’s Hospital to End Cruel Cat Lab

PETA Campaign Prompts Washington University/St. Louis Children’s Hospital to End Cruel Cat Lab 

For Immediate Release:
May 31, 2013

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

St. Louis, Mo. — PETA is thrilled that Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) has finally decided to spare cats the pain of enduring crude medical training drills and is joining the hundreds of other facilities across the country that teach people to save babies’ lives by exclusively using sophisticated lifelike simulators. As reported by the Riverfront Times this morning, the change in WUSTL’s program comes just six weeks after PETA released undercover video footage of cats having hard tubes forced down their throats in the school’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course, offered in conjunction with St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Following PETA’s recent exposé, TV icon and Missouri native Bob Barker wrote to the school to offer to purchase $75,000 worth of simulation equipment and find homes for the nine cats who were confined for the training laboratory. PETA also filed a complaint with the Missouri attorney general alleging that misleading claims that the school made in defense of the course violated consumer-protection laws.

PETA’s campaign to urge WUSTL to end its use of cats in the PALS course began in 2008 and has included protests, pleas from medical experts, and ad campaigns.

The PALS course’s creator and sponsor, the American Heart Association, opposes the use of animals in the program, and WUSTL was the last facility in the country that PETA knows of that was still using animals.