Former game show host Bob Barker has gotten involved in an animal welfare group's efforts to get the University of Virginia to drop a medical-training technique that involves practicing on live cats. The university counters that the use of cats is vital to saving the lives of sick infants.
In a letter to University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan, which was provided to The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress by the welfare group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Barker argues that high-tech simulators should replace the cats.
"I'm very concerned about the pain and suffering these animals experience — and I'm also worried that pediatrics residents are being short-changed on their education," Barker writes in the letter, dated Monday.
The university has faced criticism from PCRM before, but this appears to be the first time that Barker, who gave $1 million to the university in 2009 to establish an animal law program, has added his opinion. Barker is known for signing off "The Price is Right" with a plea to viewers to spay or neuter their pets.
"The university has not yet received the letter from Mr. Barker, but we welcome the opportunity to provide him with the facts about why our physicians believe that the use of cats to train graduate physicians how to insert breathing tubes into critically ill premature newborns is the most effective teaching method available today," said university spokeswoman Carol Wood.
University doctors follow developing technology very closely but have not yet found a simulator that does as good a job educating people as the three cats the university uses, Wood said. The babies in question have a 30- to 60-second window in which they can have tubes inserted and their lives saved, Wood said.
Dr. John J. Pippin of PCRM called the university's arguments in favor of the use of cats "nonsense."
Pippin argued that only a few programs have training that involves cats and that the simulators are sufficiently advanced that they render cats obsolete for training purposes.
"They're really swimming against the tide," he said.
Wood quoted medical school Dean Steven T. DeKosky, who said university policy should be based on what's best for patients, not "in response to a public relations campaign."
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