Stop Stabbing Pigs To Teach Human Surgery!

ejoseph@harthosp.org, ljacobs@harthosp.org, ethomps@harthosp.org, epellet@harthosp.org, lbow@harthosp.org

Hartford Hospital
80 Seymour Street; Hartford, CT 06102

Mr. Elliot Joseph, President and CEO
Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, Director, Trauma Program/ATOM
Erica Thompson, Coordinator, ATOM program
Liz Pelletier, Animal Research Facility Manager/IACUC member
Dr. Laurine Bow, Director, Research Program


Dear Mr. Joseph, Drs. Jacobs and Bow, Ms. Pelletier and Ms. Thompson:

As an advocate of viable medical research and training, I am dismayed Hartford Hospital relies upon old-fashioned animal experimentation for its Advanced Trauma Operative Management (ATOM) course.

I understand Hartford Hospital, in collaboration with the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, oversees a 3-hour lab for which students pay $1,500 to injure adult pigs. The animals are stabbed in various organs of the abdomen and chest, including the bowel, bladder, kidney, diaphragm, liver, spleen and heart. Each month, five pigs undergo 14 different mutilations. After prolonged confinement, they either die during the drills or are destroyed at the end of the session.

U.S. Department of Agriculture documents show Hartford Hospital regularly holds more than 100 pigs for ATOM exercises, along with mice, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and sheep for use in other experiments.

Deliberately maiming pigs delays knowledge and squanders the state's resources. Experimenters cannot replicate human conditions in animals with physiological, cellular, genetic and psychological attributes significantly different from our own.

Please join over 95% of American medical schools that do not use animals in surgical training. Most Advanced Trauma Life support courses have discarded live animal labs and the American College of Surgeons no longer recommends animal experimentation in its curriculum.

I urge you to use animal-free techniques with human-focused results -- such as virtual reality simulators, hands-on physician mentoring, cadavers mechanically equipped to pump artificial blood through vessels and emulate live human surgery, etc.

Animal-free research supplies data relevant to humans. It deletes overhead to confine, feed, conduct autopsies, and dispose of laboratory animals. A New England Journal of Medicine report (2007) highlights the "very detailed feedback and...more subtle measurement of trainee performance" surgical
students gain from use of virtual reality simulators. Furthermore, the article summarizes, inanimate models are "safe, reproducible, portable, readily available, and...cost-effective."

Please terminate the use of live animals in surgical courses at Hartford Hospital. Animal labs not only numb students to pain and suffering, but also dissuade them from evolving with the most credible and proficient technologies available. Thank you for your valuable time and consideration.

Sincerely,