Please help me improve medical training and save animals in my home state. The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UC) is using live pigs to train surgeons—even though hundreds of medical centers across the country have ceased the practice.

In the general surgery program at UC, trainees practice invasive procedures on live pigs, including cutting into their throats and chests to insert tubes and remove all or parts of internal organs, including the kidneys and bowels. If the animals survive the procedures, they are then killed. 

But more than 200 hospitals and universities across the United States do not kill animals to train surgery residents. In fact, even 12 other surgery residency programs in Ohio—including both Cleveland Clinic campuses, Wright State University, Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, and OhioHealth Doctors Hospital in Columbus—use only nonanimal training methods. These human-relevant methods include modern human-patient simulators, laparoscopic simulators, virtual reality trainers, and human cadavers. UC already has a state-of-the-art simulation center that could provide the resources to replace animals and provide superior training. 

We all deserve medical training that is consistent with national standards, human-relevant, and humane, so please help make that happen in Ohio. Join me in telling the University of Cincinnati to end live animal use IMMEDIATELY!  

Angie Eakin, MD

Columbus, Ohio