Documents recently obtained by PETA reveal that the University of Michigan's (UM) Survival Flight course for nurses has been tormenting live cats and pigs in cruel and deadly medical-training exercises, even though UM already uses state-of-the-art human-patient simulators to teach the same skills in other courses for nurses and physicians.

Cats who in the past have been purchased by UM from animal shelters have a hard plastic tube repeatedly forced down their delicate windpipes for intubation training and are frequently killed after the procedure. Pigs have holes cut into their limbs, throats, and chests and have needles stabbed into their bones and hearts for trauma training exercises before they are killed.

Studies by leading medical experts have repeatedly found that in addition to saving animals, the use of simulators is superior to the use of animal labs for preparing trainees to perform the lifesaving skills taught in UM's Survival Flight course. The Air & Surface Transport Nurses Association, which is the professional organization representing flight nurses, endorses the use of simulators to teach these skills as well. In addition, UM's student government has also approved a resolution strongly urging the school to end these inhumane and archaic things.

Please also send a e-mail here: https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3147

We the undersigned were dismayed to learn that the University of Michigan still mutilates and kills cats and pigs in a Survival Flight course even though other courses for nurses and physicians at the university teach the same procedures by using modern, educationally superior human-patient simulators. The Air & Surface Transport Nurses Association, which is the professional organization representing flight nurses, endorses the use of simulators to teach these skills as well.

To continue harming animals for this training when the university already owns simulators and have deemed them to be superior to the use of animals is unjustifiable.

We urge you to please act swiftly to end these cruel cat and pig labs.