For decades, medical professionals around the globe have carved open the chests, throats, abdomens, and limbs of thousands of live dogs, pigs, sheep, and goats before killing them as part of a cruel surgical skills laboratory held during a widely taught training course.

PETA is combating this mutilation of animals and modernizing medical training by bringing advanced animal-free simulator technology to training programs in nearly two dozen countries.

Deadly and invasive surgeries on animals compose a portion of Advanced Trauma Life Support training, a program developed by the American College of Surgeons that aims to teach healthcare providers globally how to treat patients with traumatic injuries. The training focuses on providing treatment within the 60 minutes that immediately follow an injury, when prompt and effective care is crucial.

By practicing on animals, participating surgeons are crucially deprived of a working familiarity with complex human anatomy. Human anatomy differs greatly from that of other animals, which makes cutting open other animals to learn how to treat humans’ life-threatening injuries pointless, cruel and highly ineffective.

The TraumaMan simulator, manufactured by Simulab Corporation, offers an advanced human-relevant training model that allows surgeons to practice drills without mutilating and killing sensitive animals. The high-tech human surrogate provides a breathing, bleeding human torso with realistic skin, tissue, ribs, and internal organs.

The simulators offer vital benefits over animal-based exercises. The TraumaMan systems are more portable, less costly, and reusable. Studies show that doctors who learn lifesaving surgical skills on TraumaMan are more proficient than those who slice up animals.

PETA’s Global Outreach Takes Animal Abuse out of Medical Training

PETA has donated 124 TraumaMan simulators, worth more than $3 million, to Advanced Trauma Life Support programs in 23 countries, including Albania, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Arab Emirates. Read about our victories over the years 2014, 2015, 2022, and 2023.

The donations spare the lives of more than 2,000 animals each year and provide surgeons with superior, human-relevant training. Following PETA’s simulator donations, 75% of responding Advanced Trauma Life Support programs now use human simulation models, sparing animals pointlessly cruel mutilation and death.

A 2019 study published by PETA and a surgeon found that our TraumaMan donations “successfully transformed the surgical skills laboratories of … international Advanced Trauma Life Support programs to replace animal use with non-animal simulation models that are more anatomically realistic, cost less, and allow trainees to repeat surgical skills until proficiency.”

PETA continuously surveys Advanced Trauma Life Support programs to assess the global use of animals and offer support through donations of TraumaMan simulators.

Killing animals for medical training is cruel and ineffective and prevents medical professionals from acquiring the relevant skills they need to help human patients.

Please take action by urging Oregon Health & Science University to abandon its deadly training on live pigs and adopt a public policy banning the use of live animals in its obstetrics and gynecology residency training program: