A national nonprofit is using billboards to call out Hennepin County Medical Center for using live animals to teach and train physicians in emergency medical procedural skills.
The animal-rights group says the hospital should instead use simulators. It says they show the human anatomy better and are more realistic for training than using sheep and rabbits to practice procedures such as inserting breathing tubes and needles to drain fluids from the chest and heart.
The group called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine placed a billboard on 3rd Street near Chicago Avenue that shows a doctor in a white coat giving a thumbs down to the practice.
It is accompanied by the words "Hennepin County Medical Center: Using Animals to Teach Human Medicine? Switchtosimulation.org." The group said another billboard is coming.
"Sheep and rabbits are mutilated and killed for substandard-level training and cheating Minnesotans of the best trained physicians when they arrive in the emergency room," said Dr. John Pippin, director of academic affairs for the Washington D.C.-based group of 12,000 members.
The group claims most emergency medicine residency programs around the country have given up using animals for training and that simulators replicate human anatomy better than animals. In a survey of 162 hospitals, the group found that 144 of the 162 emergency medicine programs no longer use live animals for training.
It also said HCMC is the only hospital in Minnesota still using live animals for training.
The group said Thursday it plans to submit a request for a cruelty investigation to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.
