Success! US Military Takes a Huge Step Towards Ending Its War on Animals

In a groundbreaking victory more than three decades in the making, the US military has agreed to replace the use of animals in six different areas of medical training with modern human-patient simulators – an enlightened step forward that will save countless human and animal lives.

These advanced simulators will better prepare medical personnel to treat injured soldiers and will save animals from being cut into and having hard plastic tubes repeatedly forced down their throats, among other invasive and often deadly procedures.

As reported in a Boston Globe cover story, in a recently released memorandum, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr Jonathan Woodson determined that “suitable simulation alternatives can replace the use of live animals” in certain trauma and other surgical training courses. PETA US had specifically requested that the military adopt the simulators for trauma and paediatric intubation training, two of the areas for which they will now be used. Woodson ordered all service branches “to fully transition to the use of simulations in these programs by no later than January 1, 2015.”

The Department of Defense’s announcement follows numerous letters and complaints filed by PETA US and military and civilian medical experts as well as protests and hundreds of thousands of e-mails from concerned supporters specifically calling for medical training using human simulators instead of animals.

Unhappily, the UK and a handful of other EU countries have still not got the message that using animals in military drills is both cruel and unnecessary. Every year, British soldiers travel to Denmark to shoot apart and sew up live pigs in inhumane exercises.

Please Help Send a message to the MoD asking it to adopt advanced humane training techniques and to leave animals alone!