We need your voice on an urgent matter. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, alleging that the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) School of Medicine is in violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act for using live pigs in its curriculum. Please help this effort by asking UMMC to end this animal use today.

UMMC uses live pigs in its medical student physiology lab, which is scheduled to occur four times this month and will involve a total of 32 pigs. In these laboratory sessions, students will place catheters in the arteries and veins of the pigs, block the animals’ arteries, and inject them with drugs. Students will then open the pigs’ chest cavities and massage the hearts. Afterwards, the animals will be killed.

It is time for UMMC to make the change. UMMC is one of only seven medical schools in the U.S. and Canada still using live animals for training. Furthermore, UMMC already has a state-of-the-art simulation center that could easily provide nonanimal training methods for its physiology lab.

So far, the responsible UMMC faculty and adminsitrators have ignored pleas to change this method. Please help us by telling UMMC School of Medicine dean Dr. James Keeton to end this cruel and unnecessary practice!