Human-Based Chemical Casualty Management Training Methods

UPDATE: Victory for Monkeys as Army Agrees to End Live Chemical Casualty Exercise: After years of pressure from PCRM, on Oct. 13, 2011, the Army announced that it would phase out the use of monkeys for its chemical casualty management courses. The Army completed this transition in November 2011. Now, the Army makes further use of high-fidelity simulators and moulage—superior nonanimal alternatives that meet the needs of U.S. troops far better than the irrelevant monkey laboratory.

Human-Based Training Methods

Because widely validated and accepted nonanimal alternatives for chemical casualty management and combat trauma training courses exist, there is no justification for the use of live animals for these training purposes.

Chemical Casualty Management Training

Photo courtesy www.laerdal.com.

Currently, live monkeys are used in U.S. Army courses in which medical personnel are trained to treat patients who have been exposed to chemical, biological, or nerve agents. In these courses, which take place only at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, vervet monkeys are exposed to an overdose of the drug physostigmine, causing seizures, diarrhea, and vomiting while trainees largely observe.

However, there are a number of superior methods that could immediately replace the use of vervet monkeys and provide more effective training:

• Researchers with the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps and Israel’s Carmel Medical Center have developed a nonanimal training curriculum for the medical management of patients exposed to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The course includes lectures, simulation training, and the use of moulage, in which actors with applied makeup mimic the symptoms of chemical warfare casualties.
• High-fidelity human patient simulators such as the Laerdal SimMan 3G replicate human responses to pharmacological agents and allow for hands-on training, data collection, and objective feedback.
• Across the United States, civilian medical personnel are regularly trained how to respond to mass chemical, biological, nerve agent attacks in a type of training that uses human patient simulators and actors playing the role of casualties, complete with artificial wounds. These successful programs, called mass casualty incident trainings, prepare trainees in a way that is more realistic and more comprehensive than the use of vervet monkeys.