Approximately 20 members of the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine protested outside Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Medical Center June 29 objecting the hospital's use of live pigs during surgical training programs, according to a MassLive report.
The committee claimed the hospital's use of live pigs to teach surgical skills to students enrolled in its advanced trauma life support courses is not "unavoidable" and violates the Animal Welfare Act, according to the report.
The group suggested Baystate Medical Center use "educationally superior nonanimal training measures," such as Simulab's TraumaMan System, which is designed to create a realistic simulation of human skin, subcutaneous fat and muscle.
The organization also filed a federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Eastern Regional Animal Care office about the issue.
Ronald Gross, MD, chief of the division of trauma, acute care surgery and surgical critical care at Baystate Medical Center and an associate professor of surgery at Boston-based Tufts University School of Medicine, told MassLive he doesn't believe alternative training methods can match "a lifelike model that breathes and bleeds and shows physical changes the way that an animal model does," according to the report.
Dr. Gross continued, stating the pigs "are treated as well as and just like human patients," and that "the only pain and suffering [the pigs may feel] … is the insertion of an intravenous line — something [surgeons] do to people all the time," according to the report.