Dear PCRM supporter,

Despite thousands of e-mails and calls from people like you, earlier this week Massachusetts General Hospital unnecessarily killed live sheep in a trauma training course. But we still have the chance to end future animal use by appealing to the course director. Please politely e-mail, call, or write a letter to Susan Briggs, M.D., and ask her to use only nonanimal training methods in the upcoming October course and future Advanced Trauma Life Support courses.

Being polite is the most effective way to help these animals.

Across the nation, more than 90 percent of Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) courses are taught using only human-based simulators, which Mass General currently owns. Take action, and then forward this message to your friends who care about animals and effective medical education. Send an automatic e-mail.

Susan Briggs, M.D.
Trauma and Surgical Critical Care
55 Fruit St., GRB 13
Boston, MA 02114-2696
Phone: 617-726-3597
E-mail: sbriggs@partners.org

Mass General owns the American College of Surgeons-approved simulator known as the TraumaMan System. The hospital uses the simulator to teach ATLS surgical skills to medical students while using live sheep to teach the very same procedures to practicing physicians.

On May 14, PCRM filed a formal request with Mass General’s Subcommittee on Research Animal Care asking that it deny the use of animals in the hospital’s ATLS program. The letter cites an ongoing survey by PCRM, which has so far received responses from 201 ATLS programs in the United States and Canada. The survey has found that 187 of those programs (more than 90 percent) exclusively use nonanimal models for instruction. The vast majority of those 187 programs exclusively use the TraumaMan System.

Learn more about the TraumaMan System. If you have any questions, please contact me at rmerkley@pcrm.org. Thanks so much for your help!

Best regards,
 
Ryan Merkley
Manager of Humane Education Programs