UW: Stop surgical training on live animals
It’s a shock. The University of Washington has resumed using live animals in surgical training — a useless, inhumane practice.
At our last NARN letter-writing event, many of us wrote letters to the officials and offices below. If you’d like to join the chorus asking the university to stop, write to:
UW Office of Animal Welfare
P.O. Box 357160
Seattle, WA 98195
Email: concerns@uw.edu
Paul G. Ramsey, M.D.
CEO, UW Medicine
1959 NE Pacific St
Seattle, WA 98195
Email: pramsey@uw.edu
Ana Mari Cauce
UW President
301 Gerberding Hall
P.O. Box 351230
Seattle, WA 98195
Email: pres@uw.edu
Here’s a sample letter:
Dear XYZ (above),
I’m writing as a Seattle resident/UW alum/WA resident to ask that you stop using live pigs in surgical training, an ethical decision you made five years ago that should not change in light of financial incentives. As you know, there are excellent — and, despite your recent public statements, sufficient — alternatives that do not involve animals. Please find your moral compass.
Thank you,
Your name
Deborah Horne at KIRO-7 broadcast an excellent story on the issue on May 31.
“The University of Washington stopped using pigs in its surgical training five years ago. But it recently gave the medical school the green light to resume using live pigs for advanced training,” Horne reported. “Critics say it’s all about the grant money being used to fund the use of live pigs for surgical training.
“Now a professor is calling foul. Lisa Jones-Engel has devoted her life and her career to animals. So she joined the University of Washington’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to help in its mission to establish protocol for the use of animals in research.
“She accuses the UW and the committee of stepping away from that standard after a new grant came in that would allow the Medical School to once again use live pigs in surgical training.”
After 17 years at UW, Jones-Engel left after spring quarter.
Get out your pens/keyboards! And stay tuned for the date of our next letter-writing event!
Photo: Rescued pig basking at Edgar’s Mission in Australia. Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals.org
