By Blythe Bernhard
St. Louis Post Dispatch
St. LOUIS, Mo. — Despite continued protests from animal rights activists, Washington University will keep using cats to train medical professionals how to open the airways of critically ill infants, school officials said.
The animal rights group PETA asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday to investigate the university and its medical training programs at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
The group filed a similar complaint with the USDA in 2009, but PETA’s latest filing includes a video taken in March without the university’s knowledge in a pediatric advanced life support course. The course includes voluntary practice on sedated cats that stand in for critically ill infants requiring breathing tubes threaded through their windpipes.
Full story: Doctors, nurses at Washington U practice with breathing tubes in cats despite complaints