We're delighted to report PETA's latest victory for animals used for experimentation—and this time, our "happy dance" is a Charleston, in honor of the hometown of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Following a vigorous PETA campaign, MUSC has confirmed that the school has not used any pigs for crude trauma training exercises in more than a year and that it has no future plans to do so.

After learning that participants in cruel, archaic training exercises were cutting holes into the throats and chests of live pigs—even though the university used superior state-of-the-art simulators to teach the same skills in other courses—PETA embarked on a three-year campaign to urge MUSC to modernize its curriculum.

Thanks are due not only to MUSC but also to everyone who supported PETA's efforts, which included protests near campus; involvement from local law students; an online campaign in which tens of thousands of people contacted the school via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter; and complaints to authorities that prompted citations for violations of federal animal welfare law.

What You Can Do

Pigs in South Carolina can rest a bit easier now, but a few schools still torture and kill animals instead of using modern and superior non-animal training methods. Please urge the University of Michigan to follow MUSC's smart and compassionate example by ending the use of animals for its trauma training courses in favor of the simulators that it already owns.

Members of PETA's research staff worked with current and former military medical officers to survey officials in all 28 NATO countries regarding their military medical training programs, and now their findings—showing that more than three-quarters of those nations do not use any animals—have been published in the August issue of Military Medicine, the prestigious journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the U.S. The study's publication is just the most recent advance in PETA's campaign to end archaic, cruel, and deadly trauma training exercises by U.S. armed forces.

International Compassion, Domestic Cruelty

The 22 enlightened countries—among which are France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain—rely exclusively on a variety of non-animal training methods, including the use of lifelike human simulators in realistic battlefield scenarios.

Just six NATO countries, including (sadly) the U.S. and Canada, continue to use animals in invasive and often deadly procedures. Each year, the U.S. military and its contractors shoot, stab, mutilate, and kill more than 10,000 live animals in barbaric and antiquated trauma training exercises, even though modern simulators that breathe and bleed have been shown to better prepare doctors and medics to treat injured humans than animal laboratories.

As the study's authors state:

What You Can Do

Tell Congress that it's time to catch up to our allies and completely replace the use of animals in military trauma training with superior non-animal training methods.

Thanks to a donation of simulation equipment from PETA, goats will no longer have holes cut into their chests and necks and be killed for trauma training exercises in Egypt.

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Traumatic Trauma Training

Earlier this year, PETA was contacted by Dr. Abdelhakim Elkholy—director of the Egyptian Life Support Training Center (ELSTC) in Cairo, who conducts Egypt's only Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course—requesting PETA's help to switch from the cruel and crude use of goats to non-animal trauma training.

While Dr. Elkholy wanted to switch to Simulab Corporation's TraumaMan simulator for ATLS, budget limitations kept him from making the transition. PETA was pleased to donate three TraumaMan simulators—thanks to the generous support of the McGrath Family Foundation—so that the ELSTC can conduct ATLS courses without using any animals.

Better Learning Through Technology

Numerous studies have shown that the TraumaMan simulator better prepares trainees to perform the lifesaving medical techniques taught in ATLS than cruel animal labs. For this reason, TraumaMan and other simulators are used instead of animals in nearly 95 percent of ATLS courses across the U.S. and Canada—and now, thanks to PETA, in 100 percent of ATLS courses in Egypt. Because, unlike animal labs, the simulators are portable and reusable, Dr. Elkholy's team will now be able to offer lifesaving ATLS training at other sites across the country.

Dr. Elkholy wrote: "With the help of PETA, now ATLS can be spread to every part in Egypt. … No more animals will be used in ATLS training in Egypt after PETA['s] donation [of] TraumaMan to [the] Egyptian Life Support Training Center …."

What You Can Do

Please join PETA in urging federal officials to modernize U.S. military trauma training by completely replacing the use of animals with superior simulation methods.

The U.S. Army's plans to use animals in trauma training are enough to make a goat faint. The army is in the market to buy up to 3,600 goats to torment and kill in exercises like those seen in this shocking undercover video, which PETA released last month. The video, sent to us by a brave whistleblower, shows instructors as they saw off live goats' limbs with tree trimmers and crudely cut open the animals' abdomens and yank out their organs. Goats moan loudly and kick during the procedures.

Goats are intelligent, inquisitive, social animals who can quickly learn to open latches on farm gates and let themselves out. Moms and kids share a strong bond and have been known to recognize each other even if they have been separated for years.

The Army plans to mutilate thousands of goats even though high-tech human simulators are readily available and offer soldiers superior training in how to treat wounds in the field.

You can help: Send PETA's two goat images included here to the Army and urge it to save thousands of goats from suffering and dying in cruel trauma training exercises by using modern simulators instead. The Army is accepting bids only until June 11, so please act now!

Note: Please do not use the words "goat" or "goats" in your e-mail to the Army because it seems to be blocking e-mails with those words in them.

Navy veteran Bob Barker was appalled at what he saw in undercover video footage of U.S. Coast Guard trauma training leaked to PETA. In the video, live goats are stabbed, have their internal organs pulled out, and have their limbs cut off with tree trimmers. The goats moan loudly and kick while they are being mutilated, a sign that they were not sufficiently anesthetized, while an instructor cheerfully whistles and a soldier jokes about writing songs about mutilating the animals.

As a proud vet, Bob wants members of the armed forces to have the best possible training—and that means replacing archaic and cruel animal exercises  with superior lifelike human simulators that can bleed, breathe, have their bones broken, and even "die." The simulators are already in use at many military facilities, and military regulations even require that non-animal methods be used when available. But the policy isn't being enforced.

Bob wrote to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on PETA's behalf to urge them to improve military trauma training by mandating that all programs use only advanced human simulators.

What You Can Do

Join Bob in asking Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security officials to comply with federal regulations and replace all use of animals with human simulators.

Thanks to a brave whistleblower, PETA has obtained horrific undercover video of live animals whose limbs were cut off for an archaic military training drill. The course was held earlier this year in Virginia Beach, Virginia, by private contractor Tier 1 Group. 

In the shocking video, instructors repeatedly crack and cut off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stab the animals with scalpels to cause internal injuries, and cut into their abdomens to crudely pull out their organs. Some of the goats moan loudly and kick their legs during the mutilations, which veterinarians who viewed the video say are signs that the goats were not adequately anesthetized and may have even been feeling pain.

The disturbing video footage shows a callous course instructor who cheerfully whistles while dismembering goats as well as members of the Coast Guard who joke about writing a song about mutilating the animals.

According to the whistleblower, later in the day the goats were shot in the face with pistols and were hacked apart with an ax while still alive. 

Today, there are high-tech humanlike simulators available specifically for military training that can breathe, bleed, cry, talk, and respond to medications. These human-based methods are obviously more humane and effective than cutting apart, blowing up, shooting, and killing thousands of animals every year. One shockingly realistic simulator is a special suit designed to be worn by a human actor that enables military personnel to safely perform emergency surgical procedures on a live human without any injury to the person.

Last year, PETA helped end an Army course that involved poisoning monkeys with chemicals, and we've saved ferrets and cats from other cruel military training courses by convincing military officials to switch to modern simulators. 

The evidence of the superiority of these state-of-the-art simulation methods is so overwhelming that Congress has introduced legislation to phase out the use of animals in military training in favor of non-animal methods.

We Need All Hands on Deck

Military medical experts, veterans, and civilian physicians are joining PETA in urging U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and other military officials to immediately end the use of animals in military trauma training exercises. And we need your help, too!