Children’s Hospital Ends Use of Cats in Medical Training After Talks With PETA

A whistleblower reported to PETA that for decades, during the annual Pediatric Flexible Bronchoscopy Postgraduate Course taught at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC), physicians inserted cables into the throats and lungs of hundreds of live cats in an attempt to practice the way to perform this medical procedure in human patients, despite the drastic anatomical differences between the two species. This procedure can cause painful and serious complications—including respiratory distress and cardiac arrest—for these animals, and one cat (who was named Biscuit) died. We immediately contacted CCHMC with information on superior non-animal methods for teaching this bronchoscopy procedure. After hearing from PETA, CCHMC quickly confirmed that it “will no longer use animals” in these training exercises.