Doctor’s group protests UW medical school use of live pigs

The University of Washington School of Medicine is coming under fire by a national physician’s group for using live pigs in paramedic training instead of simulators.

The school defends the use of the pigs, saying it is the best method for training emergency medical technicians.

The UW medical school is the only one in the Pacific Northwest, and one of only a few nationwide still using pigs, says Dr. John Pippin with The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

“It struck us as strange since that’s seldom done anymore,” says Pippin. “It is not only not necessary, it is a substandard approach in the 21st century.”

Pippin says the group – a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research – first learned the UW medical school was still using pigs and contacted the school in March of 2012, asking it to change its procedures. But despite numerous discussions, the school continued to utilize pigs.

“Our goal here at the University is to provide the very best training for them so people have the very highest likelihood of being able to survive to get to a hospital for more medical care,” says Dr. David Anderson, Executive Director for Health Science Administration and the institutional official for care and use of animals at the UW.

In the trainings, Pippin says paramedic students practice various procedures including retrograde intubation (the insertion of a wire into the throat and out through the mouth), needle cricothyroidotomy (the insertion of a needle and tube into the trachea), and surgical cricothyroidotomy (cutting open the trachea and inserting a tube).

Pippin says in addition to being inhumane, using pigs is anatomically incorrect because their necks are much thicker and their tracheae are much deeper than humans.

“There’s so much out there in terms of simulations specifically designed to replace this kind of training using animals that we’re kind of puzzled why they continue to do this,” he says.

Anderson says a committee of experts considered Pippin’s arguments, as well as those by Dr. Michael Copass, Director of the Medic One Paramedic Training Program and the Medical Director for Seattle Medic One. Ultimately, Copass – the former head of emergency services at Harborview Medical Center – prevailed.

“In this particular instance the best training comes from live tissues. And one of the elements that Dr. Copass pointed out is the simulators do a poor job of simulating bleeding, which is an essential component of being able to do these techniques in the field,” says Anderson.

Anderson also emphasizes the animals used in the training are given the same anesthesia as humans during the procedures, and are euthanized before waking up.

“So there’s no discomfort on the part of the animals,” he says.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine plans a large protest at the University of Washington Medical Center Thursday in hopes of convincing the school to change its policies.