A prominent physicians' group says Brown University is violating federal law by using live pigs for training in emergency medicine.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Tuesday asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to investigate animal use at the Warren Alpert Medical School at the Ivy League university.
A medical school spokeswoman says she didn't know about the complaint and didn't immediately respond to questions about the use of pigs. The school's website says its residency education includes hands-on animal labs.
The committee advocates for eliminating the use of live animals in any medical training and promotes the use of simulators that replicate the human body instead.
It says more than 90 percent of emergency medicine residency programs in the United States and Canada use medical simulation or cadavers.
