Convocation Commotion: PETA to Spotlight Pig-Mutilation Drills at OHSU Ceremony

For Immediate Release:
June 7, 2023

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

A crying “pig” mascot will help PETA supporters, armed with signs reading, “OHSU Mutilates Live Pigs in OB/GYN Drills,” cause a ruckus outside Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) convocation ceremony on Friday to condemn the school’s invasive medical training procedures on live pigs conducted in its OB/GYN physician residency training program.

When:    Friday, June 9, 12 noon

Where:    Outside the Oregon Convention Center, 777 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (at the southwest corner of N.E. Martin Luther King Boulevard and N.E. Holladay Street), Portland

“As OHSU’s graduates go out into the world, sensitive pigs will continue to be sliced up and killed in the school’s archaic OB/GYN training drills,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on OHSU to do better by pigs and its students’ future patients by switching to superior, non-animal technology.”

A PETA supporter has urged Dr. David B. Jacoby, dean of the OHSU School of Medicine, to end the pig-mutilation drills. PETA has also sent a letter to Dr. Amy L. Stenson, director of OHSU’s OB/GYN residency program, noting that the majority of similar programs in the U.S. use animal-free training methods, such as realistic human-patient simulators, advanced virtual reality systems, and interactive computer models.

At least 64 OHSU OG/BYN residents have cut into up to 48 live female pigs, dissected their organs, and performed other invasive surgeries on them in attempts to learn human medicine. All the pigs were later killed.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.