Activists and veterans gathered Thursday outside the main gate of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth to protest training done there that result in the death of pigs.
Nearly 50 people gathered to protest the practice that is used to prepare medics for the field.
However, one Army veteran doctor who once trained on a live goat, said the method of using live animals as training tools is outdated and ineffective compared to modern simulations.
“When seconds count, and you want to have that muscle memory, the muscle memory is there with a simulator that is a person‚” not an animal, said Dr. Robert DeMuth, 52, of Des Moines, Iowa, and supporter of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Live tissue training involves sedating an animal and inflicting wounds that are then treated and then humanely putting down the animal before it wakes up, according to medical journal documents.
He traveled across the country to attend Thursday's protest organized by PCRM in Portsmouth.
In 2003, DeMuth was caring for solders in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom as a surgeon with the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment.
He said that year, medics he trained with simulators earned awards for their care of victims of the Jordanian embassy bombing in Baghdad in which nearly 20 people died and 65 people were wounded, according to U.S. Department of State archive files.
The medics he trained “never did live tissue training,”…
