PETA Persuades Medical School to Stop Maiming Animals

Following a PETA campaign lasting over 17 months, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), which oversees the College of Medicine (UTCOM), wrote to us announcing that UTCOM would stop using live animals in surgical and emergency medical residency training programs on its Chattanooga campus. The decision came after more than 97,000 PETA supporters wrote to university leadership urging an end to medical training drills in which pigs were mutilated. Campaign actions included the following: Emmy Award winner and star of Babe James Cromwell wrote to UTHSC Chancellor Peter F. Buckley; PETA sent complaint letters to the UT system president, Buckley, and his predecessor; PETA representatives confronted Buckley along with other UT officials at campus events and spoke at two UT Board of Trustees meetings; and we ran an eye-catching full-page ad in the Commercial Appeal, the most widely circulated newspaper in the Mid-South U.S.