#Petition: Tell Sanford Health - Stop Killing Animals to Train Doctors

Sanford Health’s medical training course is the only one of its kind. That’s because it’s the only program that still has students kill animals as part of their training. Dr. Cohen says this is inhumane and unnecessary. Even the association which developed the course endorses replacing animals with simulation. Join Dr. Cohen in demanding that Sanford Health stop killing pigs to train doctors. Tell Sanford Health: Stop Killing Animals to Train Doctors 2,329 have signed Ronald Cohen, MD’s petition. Let’s get to 2,500!

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I need your help to improve medical training and save animals. Sanford Health, operating in the Dakotas and headquartered in ​my home state of Sioux Falls, S.D., is the last remaining medical center in the country still using animals in its trauma training course. The course is known as Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) and is run by Sanford Medical Center Fargo and conducted at North Dakota State University. It involves cutting into pigs to teach invasive procedures. Trainees make incisions and insert tubes and needles into an animal’s chest cavity, abdomen, throat, and the sac surrounding the heart. But this practice is completely out of step with modern standards of medical training. In fact, among the 385 accredited programs surveyed, Sanford’s is the only one in the U.S. or Canada still using animals. Programs elsewhere in the Dakotas—at Altru Health Systems, St. Alexius Medical Center, Avera McKennan Hospital, and courses run by the South Dakota ATLS Taskforce—use only nonanimal training methods.   The American College of Surgeons, which developed and accredits ATLS courses, has endorsed the replacement of animals with simulation for training since 2001. Yet, more than two decades later, only Sanford continues to kill pigs for use in ATLS training. It’s obvious that Sanford Health is behind the times. Sanford’s ongoing failure to keep up with modern training methods is a disservice both to trainees and to their future patients. Dakotans deserve medical training that is consistent with national standards, human-relevant, and humane. Please join us by telling Sanford Health that NOW is the time to banish this animal use to the history books! Ronald Cohen, MD Sioux Falls, S.D.

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