King County Executive Dow Constantine: Stop UW’s Killing of Animals for Paramedic Training
The University of Washington (UW) currently uses live pigs to train King County paramedics for a procedure called “surgical airway” in which an animal’s neck is cut open to insert a tube. Using animals for this procedure is not only unnecessary and inefficient, but it is also cruel. The procedure is performed up to six times on a single pig by multiple trainees. At the end of each session, the animal is killed.
UW has a contract with King County for the training of paramedics, so county officials clearly have the authority to call for an end to this cruel use of animals.
THE FACTS:
1. Among more than 130 paramedic programs from Texas to Washington, UW’s is the only one using live animals.
2. Devices modeled on human anatomy, called simulators, are widely available. Simulators have lifelike human skin, subcutaneous fat, and muscle. UW already owns simulators for teaching surgical airway.
3. Numerous scientific studies have concluded that using simulators is as good as, or better than, using live animals to teach surgical airway.
4. The entire UW paramedic training program requires 2,500 hours of classroom lectures, training labs, and clinical rotations, but the surgical airway procedure using live pigs only accounts for 30 seconds to several minutes of a student’s entire paramedic training curriculum.
Please join Campus Animal Rights Educators (CARE) and the overall UW community in demanding that King County Executive Dow Constantine take action to modernize this training program by ending the use of animals.
LETTER TO EXECUTIVE CONSTANTINE:
As members of the University of Washington community, we urge you to require that UW end the use of animals for training King County paramedics. The current practice is inconsistent with the vision and values of this university and the people of this county. Considering the availability of human-modeled simulators, there is no reason that UW cannot end animal use immediately. Please use your authority to mandate that UW end this animal use and modernize its paramedic curriculum.