CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING: View Slides from PCRM’s Feb. 3 Capitol Hill Presentation (PDF) >

As the U.S. military fights two wars, it is essential that the medical training our service members receive is the best that is available. Unfortunately, despite making impressive strides in the development and utilization of training and troop protection methods, the U.S. military is still relying on the use of goats, pigs, and monkeys to teach medical procedures.

Currently, the U.S. military uses live animals in combat trauma training and chemical casualty management courses. In some of these courses:

• The legs of live goats are amputated one by one to cause severe hemorrhaging.
• Monkeys are injected with a toxic dose of a drug, causing seizures and difficulty breathing that can result in death.

Replacing the use of goats and pigs in combat trauma training courses is imperative to ensure that our troops receive the most effective training before deploying to combat zones. Ensuring that trauma education and training are most effective for treating human injuries requires phasing in a combination of human-based training methods.

Likewise, improvements in chemical and biological casualty care training must be made. The use of vervet monkeys in chemical casualty management training is clinically and physiologically subpar and should be replaced with human-based methods, such as high-fidelity human patient simulators and moulage.

Luckily, Congress realizes change must happen. On Dec. 10, 2009, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, introduced legislation that would phase in human-based training methods and replace the current use of live animals in these military medical training courses.

Both as a matter of troop readiness and humane medical practice, the U.S. military must modernize its medical teaching methods and phase in the use human-based methods in place of live animals.

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