In the name of un-progress, University of Mississippi Medical Center resumed live pig labs to "teach" future medical practitioners how to treat human beings. The physiology drills call for students to insert catheters in pigs’ arteries and veins, then obstruct arteries and inject them with drugs. Trainees next expose the animals’ chest cavities to massage their hearts. Upon completion, all animals are killed.

Hmmm. UMMC already runs a sophisticated simulation center. Why not modernize ALL medical curricula with tools applicable to human anatomy and surgery? Mutilating live pigs is no longer viable, given accessibility to advanced human-patient simulators, human cadaver systems, computerized models…

In Canada, every trauma training university is now animal-free. In the U.S., some 96% use human- patient simulators for Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) programs.