Cleveland Clinic Ends Medical Training on Live Dogs

The Cleveland Clinic South Pointe Hospital (CCSPH) announced this week that it ended its mandatory medical training conducted on live dogs at the Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED). On Tuesday, nonprofit organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) informed NEOMED that it would file a federal complaint and erect billboards pointing to the program’s use of live animals. CCSPH chose to end the program the same day. “We have ended our involvement with the lab program at NEOMED effective immediately,” CCSPH said in a statement. “Initially, we were planning to end this portion of the South Pointe Hospital Emergency Medicine residency training at the conclusion of this year. Upon greater reflection, we have expedited its discontinuation and are looking into other alternatives to continue properly training our Emergency Medicine residents.” PCRM applauded the swift action. “We believe that the termination of animal use for emergency medicine training by the CCPSH and NEOMED,” PCRM Director of Academic Affairs John Pippin, MD, told VegNews, “will have a ripple effect on other programs not only in Ohio but nationwide.” Pippin revealed that with the addition of CCSPH, 90 percent of the 175 surveyed emergency medicine residencies in the United States now use human-relevant training methods instead of animals, including 10 other programs in Ohio. In a similar action last year, PCRM prompted prestigious medical school Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to end its mandatory medical training on live piglets.