Why does Mizzou use live pigs to train doctors? Should they stop? Behind those new ads
A national group is urging the University of Missouri’s emergency medicine residency program in Columbia to halt its use of live pigs to train new ER doctors.
A spokesperson for the medical school confirmed to The Star that the program uses around six pigs per year for specialized trainings on invasive procedures.
The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group best known for its animal welfare advocacy, has been working since 2017 to end the practice at Mizzou. It has rented billboards around Columbia, taken out online ads on the subject and even staged a protest on campus last year.
The nonprofit advocacy group argues that high-tech medical simulators offer better training for new doctors without requiring animal deaths. But Mizzou officials insist that for some specialized trainings, animal subjects still provide a level of realism that simulators cannot.
Here’s what to know about medical training using live animals at Mizzou and the group trying to put an end to the practice nationwide.
How are pigs used at the University of Missouri’s emergency medicine program?
Warning: This section contains graphic descriptions of medical procedures.
The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine said that new doctors training for ER work at Mizzou’s med school perform invasive procedures on live pigs, which the school confirmed.
“We use simulation training methods whenever possible, however some life-saving measures cannot be adequately replicated through simulation,” medical school spokesperson Eric Maze told The Star.
“We use approximately six pigs a year in this specialized life-saving training, which follows humane and strict protocols that have been reviewed and approved by the University’s Animal Care and Use Committee.”
This committee authorizes the emergency medicine residency program to use up to 36 pigs every three years for an intensive training that residents must undergo once every six months. The most recent protocol, which Maze shared with The Star, was approved in March and is in effect until 2026.
The pigs used are young adults weighing around 90 to 150 pounds that the program sources from Mizzou’s swine research and teaching farm 5 miles south of the school’s main campus. During the trainings, the pigs are anesthetized and operated on by three to four students at once.
These are the procedures residents perform:
1. Venous cutdown: surgically exposing a vein and inserting a tube to deliver fluids.
2. Intraosseous line insertion: drilling through a bone to insert a hollow needle into the bone marrow.
3. Diagnostic peritoneal lavage: inserting a catheter into the stomach cavity to check for internal bleeding.
4. Transvenous cardiac pacing: inserting a catheter into the heart through the jugular vein and measuring its electrical pulses.
5. Chest tube thoracostomy: inserting a hollow tube between the ribs to drain air or fluid from around the lungs.
6. Open thoracotomy with pericardial repair: opening the chest cavity and repairing the sac of tissue around the heart, often with synthetic mesh.
7. Cricothyroidotomy: cutting and inserting a tube into the throat to create an open airway.
8. Post-mortem pericardiocentesis: removing extra fluid from the sac around the heart using a needle and small catheter tube.
The report notes that the pigs may die during the sixth procedure — but if they don’t, they are euthanized afterwards without being woken up from anesthesia.
“Animals will be humanely euthanized while still under anesthesia following completion of procedures,” the protocol states.
Why does Mizzou use pigs to train future ER doctors?
Medical training procedures involving live animals have declined in recent years due to the spread of highly realistic medical simulators.
Dr. John Pippin, the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine’s director of academic affairs and a former cardiologist, said that these high-tech simulators are more effective than pigs at mimicking a human patient.
“They should not be using animals at all,” he told The Star. “There is no advantage to doing so in terms of training emergency medicine physicians.”
He added that, including Mizzou, his group is aware of only eight emergency medical residency programs, one anesthesiology residency program and one medical trauma training program in the U.S. that still use live animal subjects to train doctors.
In surgical residencies, the practice is more common, with around 54 using live animals, he said. The group compiles its data from a combination of public records requests and direct correspondence with residency programs, spokesperson Reina Pohl told The Star.
But some Mizzou educators disagree that simulators are sufficient to train new ER doctors.
“Manipulation of live tissue, control of bleeding vessels, etc. are experienced by participants of this lab and cannot be definitively replicated with the currently available high-fidelity medical simulators,” the protocol document states.
It adds that using live pigs is necessary due to “the lack of simulation that closely replicates living human physiology and anatomy.”
In response, Pippin noted that Mizzou’s medical school in Columbia is also home to the Shelden Clinical Simulation Center, which boasts cutting-edge medical simulation technology.
“The use of simulation mannequins in medical instruction is the new wave of education for health professionals,” the center’s website states. “The mannequins breathe, have a pulse, have eyes that dilate and can react to various drugs. The experience for medical students and health care professionals is invaluable.”
Is the use of live animals sanctioned by professional groups?
The American Association of Medical Colleges has said it formally supports the use of live animals in medical education.
“As animals continue to be vital in segments of the medical education continuum … the AAMC supports this use of animals to meet essential educational objectives,” the group writes.
Spokesperson Stuart Heiser confirmed that this position, which was last updated in 2008, remains in effect.
Few third-party experts have been willing to comment on whether there is educational value provided by live pigs that high-tech simulators cannot provide. Medical educators at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Kansas Medical Center did not respond to The Star’s requests for comment.
But one doctor, who spoke to The Star on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on medical education policies, said that there are some advantages to using live animals in training experienced emergency medicine residents.
“As an instructor, it’s important to choose a modality that is good in the specific thing you’re trying to teach,” he said in a written statement. “The live tissue adds levels of complexity that you simply cannot get with the simulated tissue.”
The doctor currently directs the emergency medicine residency program at a large public university, and he added that past trainings he has led using live pigs have given senior residents a more realistic idea of the challenges they will face during these emergency procedures.
Examples include the difficulty of cutting through muscle and connective tissue, controlling blood flow, seeing inside the darkness of a chest cavity, handling the pressure of alarms from vital sign monitors, and avoiding vital body parts like the phrenic nerve and the esophagus.
“The simulator might allow you to practice all of those different things … but there’s no pressure, no bleeding, no alarms, no sense that this ‘patient’ is dying,” the doctor said. “Which is great for a first-timer, but doesn’t allow someone to really get a sense of what it might be like to do this procedure on a living creature.”
Nevertheless, Pippin from the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine insists that live animals’ continued role in human medicine is a relic of outdated practices.
“We are physician and science driven,” he said. “We use information to seek win-win outcomes that improve human health and human education while not needlessly sacrificing animals.”
Do you have more questions about health care or activism in Missouri or Kansas? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
