PETA Donates Lifesaving Human Simulators to National Iraqi Surgical Training Program

For Immediate Release:
November 29, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

For the second time in five years, PETA has sent two new anatomically correct human simulators to Iraq’s Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) program, this time for use at the University of Babylon.

The TraumaMan simulation models, from Simulab Corporation, are human surrogate models that will prevent dozens of animals each year from being mutilated and killed in surgical practice drills. PETA previously donated a pair of TraumaMan models to Iraq’s ATLS program in 2017.

“Surgeons-in-training deserve the best medical education possible, and that means using human-relevant simulation models,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is delighted to provide Iraq’s Advanced Trauma Life Support program with superior technology that spares animals’ lives and allows trainees to practice invasive procedures until they’re confident and adept.”

PETA has donated 122 TraumaMan simulators—worth more than $3 million—to ATLS programs in 22 countries, sparing the lives of more than 2,000 animals each year and providing surgeons with superior, human-relevant training. Studies show that doctors who learned lifesaving surgical skills on human simulators are more proficient than those who used animals for their training.

“We in the College of Medicine at the University of Babylon are highly appreciating PETA’s efforts to maintain animals’ rights. We appreciate PETA’s donation of realistic TraumaMan human simulators to achieve our mission to save more trauma victims’ lives in Iraq,” says Prof. Mohend Alshalah, dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Babylon.

In 2019, PETA and a surgeon published a study in the Journal of Surgical Education that found the organization’s TraumaMan donation program had “successfully transformed the surgical skills laboratories of 22 international ATLS programs to replace animal use with non-animal simulation models that are more anatomically realistic, cost less, and allow trainees to repeat surgical skills until proficiency.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on,” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—is now calling on the University of Tennessee College of Medicine to stop maiming pigs in its emergency medical training and switch to superior, animal-free training methods.

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