The Victoria College Pledges to End the Use of Live Cats in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) Courses

October 2005

Stray cats in Victoria, Texas, will no longer be susceptible to being picked up by local animal control officials and taken to The Victoria College for use in endotracheal intubation teaching exercises associated with the Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course. Animal intubation laboratories typically involve forcing plastic tubes down cats’ throats in order to create artificial airways, sometimes causing tracheal injury when performed by inexperienced students. PETA asked the college to instead adopt a sophisticated and widely used non-animal human patient simulator called PediaSIM. In his reply, Dr. Goodson agreed that PediaSIM would provide a “realistic lab experience” and made the following compassionate decision: “[T]he college plans to discontinue the use of live cats in this course and use manikins as many other teaching facilities do.”