wednesday 4/25- 3:30 to 5:00 hartford hospital

For Immediate Release
Contact: Justin Goodman
April 24, 2007 860-882-2492/Justin_goodman@sbcglobal.net

Medical professionals, activists decry live animal trauma lab at Hartford Hospital Hartford -- Local animal rights campaigners are planning a demonstration at Hartford Hospital on Wednesday afternoon to denounce the use of live pigs in surgical training exercises. Date- Wednesday, April 25, 2007 Time- 3:30pm-5pm Place- Entrance to Hartford Hospital, 80 Seymour Street, Hartford,CT Hartford Hospital, in concert with the UConn School of Medicine, administers a program called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage fourteen different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the kidney, pancreas, stomach, diaphragm, and heart. Hartford Hospital uses five pigs per month in this series of highly invasive surgical procedures. Those pigs who survive the traumas and surgeries are killed at the end of the exercises. According to documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the facility regularly confines over 100 pigs for use in this program. They also use numerous mice, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and sheep in various other forms of experimentation. Justin Goodman, a local animal rights campaigner, stated, "Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable." He continued, "Regardless of how many pigs these doctors operate on, some human patient in the ER is still going to have to be their first. Why waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead?" The promising alternatives Goodman cites include the work of Dr. Emad Aboud and his colleagues at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. They have developed a model for conducting surgical training exercises that utilizes donated human cadavers and could completely eliminate the need to use live animals for trauma exercises. His method entails circulating artificial blood through the vessels of the cadaver using a mechanical pump to simulate a live human being. Added John Pippin, M.D., Senior Medical and Research Adviser for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: "The surgery training paradigm has moved beyond the use of live animals. More than 95 percent of American medical schools have eliminated the use of animals to teach surgery skills, the majority of Advanced Trauma Life Support courses do not use animals, and the American College of Surgeons no longer uses animals in its own courses or in its revised surgery curriculum." "In the interest of upholding their duty to practice ethical medicine, doctors and researchers should be abandoning these flawed animal models in favor of pursuing human-relevant, humane alternatives," Goodman said. -------------- On Wednesday, activists will also be protesting animal experimentation at the UConn Health Center (Farmington) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (Wallingford). Call Justin Goodman at 860 882 2492 or email justin_goodman@sbcglobal.net for more information.

Hartford Hospital is hell for animals AND THEY NEED YOUR HELP!!!!

We recently learned that Hartford Hospital, in concert with the UConn School of Medicine, administers a program called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage 14 different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the kidney, stomach, spleen and heart. Hartford Hospital uses five pigs per month in this series of highly invasive surgical procedures. Those pigs who survive the traumas and surgeries are killed at the end of the exercises. According to documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the facility regularly confines over 100 pigs for use in this program. They also use numerous mice, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and sheep in various other forms of experimentation. Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable. Regardless of how many pigs these doctors operate on, some human patient in the ER is still going to have to be their first. Why waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead?Your can read more detailed info about the Hartford Hospital campaign at:www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/harthosp Act now!Tell Hartford Hospital to end live pig trauma courses!! Dr. John Meehan President and CEO Hartford Hospital 80 Seymour Street Hartford, CT 06102 Tel: 860 545-2100 Email: meehan [at] harthosp.org ****Sample letter/talking points****Dear Dr. Meehan:Thank you for your time. I am writing as a concerned citizen to express my opposition to a program at Hartford Hospital called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage fourteen different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the bowel, bladder, kidney, ureter, pancreas, duodenum, stomach, diaphragm, liver, inferior vena cava, spleen and heart. Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable. It is a waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead. More than 95% of American medical schools have eliminated the use of animals to teach surgery skills and the American College of Surgeons no longer uses animals in its own courses or in its revised surgery curriculum.In the interest of upholding their duty to practice ethical medicine, doctors and researchers at Hartford Hospital should be abandoning these flawed animal models in favor of pursuing human-relevant, humane alternatives.I look forward to hearing from you.Sincerely,(name)(address) ACTION ALERT!Yes, the cruel monkey experiments being conducted by David Waitzman at the University of Connecticut Health Center have been terminated. However, the school has yet to agree to a permanent ban on the use of nonhuman primates in experimentation. In recognition of World Week for Animals in Labs, and in solidarity with the millions of animals who are suffering as you read this, please take a moment to write, call, or fax the UConn Health Center administration (even if you already have) and let them know you'd like to see this publicly-funded monkey torture ended forever.For more info on our campaign: www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/campaignTo contact UConn now, see below or visit: www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/takeactionBlock of all available email addresses listed below:deckers@nso.uchc.edu, Philip.austin@uconn.edu, dfriend@alvarezandmarsal.com,goldberg@nso1.uchc.edu, rhennessey@oscient.com, gerard.burrow@yale.edu, james.abromaitis@po.state.ct.us, j.robert.galvin@po.state.ct.us, bcarlson@adp.uchc.edu, walter@nso.uchc.edu, lalande@uchc.edu, sarmstrong@uchc.edu, yas@pobox.upenn.edu, paplauskas@adp.uchc.edu, jlorenzo@nso2.uchc.edu, pohl@uchc.edu---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sometimes people ask me why i don't eat meat. i never tell anyone why. well, not the real reason.

i'm not judging anyone. the decisions i've made are my own and are RIGHT FOR ME.

i think there is something VERY wrong with eating (much less wearing and experimenting upon) animals. i've felt this way since i was a child. i always had problems and issues when my plate had a big hunk o' meat on it. if it had a bone too, forget it, that just wasn't going to happen. as with many things i think we can comfortably share our lives with animals (the domesticated ones of course). my feelings on the subject go very much deeper than this. i don't wish to share more of them, at least at this time.