URGENT! Animals Missing From Your Area!

FACT: Every year, more than 10 million cats, pigs, frogs, and other animals are killed for classroom dissection. They're gassed, embalmed, cut from the wombs of their mothers, stolen from the wild, and even purchased from animal shelters ... all while humane alternatives to dissection exist.

Your choice not to dissect means life or death for an animal.

October is "Cut Out Dissection" Month, so spread the word about the cruelty behind dissection by posting the printable "Missing" posters around school (with permission, of course!) to raise awareness.




Please please please do it.

Download from here:

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My teacher showed us his animal dissection catalogue. A skinned cat was 34.99 plus shipping.

OMG!!

That is just so sad. Someone has to take a step against these things.

These things make me a sad Ehte.

I'm so gonna post this on FB. Those poor things...

We dissected fetal pigs. People really dissect CATS?!!? That's awful!

lol, how is dissecting a baby pig any better than dissecting a cat? Cats, by the way, are often feral and overtake a native population.

Whether it be cats or pigs. They all deserve to live.

Actually, as a person studying to be a veterinarian, I can pretty safely say that there is no true substitute for dissection. Pictures, models, videos, diagrams, etc. only go so far for learning purposes, and when it comes to identifying diseases and other issues, oftentimes the cues and clues are too subtle for anything but a hands-on examination to detect, and when the life of an animal is on the line, one hopes you have an excellent grasp of the animal in question's anatomy.

All of the animals I've dissected have either been feral (and therefore not adoptable due to various reasons, among them being heavily diseased or just plain vicious towards humans), raised for the purposes of dissection, or roadkill. In the cases where live specimens were required (mainly in the case of amphibians as they do not preserve well, or when living tissues were necessary for an experiment), particular pains were taken to ensure that their deaths were quick and painless.

You might be interested in learning about the IACUC. They are responsible for the humane treatment of experimental animals in all research and educational institutes in the US, and they have very stringent guidelines on how animals are to be cared for, treated, and euthanized.

Also, I can assure you that, in the US, it is extremely illegal to capture wild animals and place them in captivity, much less kill and use them for experimental purposes. Doing so is poaching, and it is severely punished.

Callous and heartless the killing of animals for learning purposes may be, but cruel it is not. Cruelty implies malice, that the animals were tortured and tormented before their eventual death. Rather, the IACUC exists to ensure that cruelty is not present at any time in the animal's life, from the moment they are born (for those bred for dissection) up until their time of death.

Science is a heartless subject, just as the pure knowledge science seeks to uncover is heartless, and the sacrifice of life, however saddening, is necessary for the pursuit and expansion of this knowledge.

Disagree with dissections all you wish, but do not seek to abolish them entirely. In abolishing dissections, you deprive others of invaluable learning experiences, and in condemning dissections, you disregard if not outright ignore not only their necessity in the pursuit of further knowledge, but also the contributions to current knowledge that dissections have furnished.

Across the board, science education literature has concluded that non-animal methods, like computer software, have proved to be equivalent or superior to the use of live or dead animals in providing students with an understanding of anatomy and complex biological processes. This research indicates that non-animal learning methods have been responsible for providing students with "increased learning efficiency and increased examination results," and that students' confidence and satisfaction increased, as did their preparedness for laboratories and their information-retrieval and communication abilities. Non-animal methods benefit educators by increasing teaching efficiency and lowering costs, while affording enhanced potential for the customization and repeatability of learning exercises. There are many benefits of virtual dissection, you can read about it here if you like to. Most importantly, these methods convey the intrinsic value of all animal life and the message that we can and should learn about animals without harming them.

In fact, in 2008, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) amended its official position statement on animal dissection to approve and encourage the use of non-animal alternatives.

And you could read the attachments if you'd like to.

Across the board, science education literature has concluded that non-animal methods, like computer software, have proved to be equivalent or superior to the use of live or dead animals in providing students with an understanding of anatomy and complex biological processes.

I agree with Kyll that really, there's no substitute for dissection. But in my case, it's human dissection rather than animal. I don't know what your opinion on that is. But I can assure you, they were not stolen from family homes

Also, in school the only dissection we did was of sheep's hearts and eyes bought from the butcher's.

I can't see how it's plausible to complain about 10 million animals killed for dissection and not mention the millions killed for food.

So I don't know. I appreciate your sentiment here , but I firstly believe there's a lot of sensationalism in these posters, and secondly believe that really, there is no alternative to dissection.

The first visual dissection link contains information from a seller. As such, all information taken from that site must be regarded skeptically as their whole purpose is to sell their software. In other words, they are heavily biased and so not very credible.

Your two attachments both come from PETA which is not a credible source for anything biological. Articles and such from PETA are not peer-reviewed and they do not conduct their own research, which means you are essentially taking PETA at its word that everything they say is truth by using them as support. Considering that PETA itself is heavily biased towards completely severing human-animal interactions, they are not credible in that respect either.

You claim that "across the board, science education literature has concluded that non-animal methods, like computer software, have proved to be equivalent or superior to the use of live or dead animals in providing students with an understanding of anatomy and complex biological processes". I have searched through the literature, and I have not found any such conclusive studies. The closest I found was a study conducted in 1994 involving eight students. The results of that study were that there were no statistical difference between test scores, however, as all students scored equally low, the experimenters stated that it was likely that the students were not given enough time to study, lacked motivation to do well (as they were told their performance was not graded), or were not given enough guidance in either method. Translated from scientist speak, it means that our sample size was too small and that the results are most likely not accurate; we need to repeat the experiment with a larger sample and fewer variables.

The study I reference is "Student Achievement & Attitudes in a Pilot Study Comparing an Interactive Videodisc Simulation to Conventional Dissection" by Richard T. Strauss and Mable B. Kinzie, published in The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 56, No. 7 (Oct., 1994), pp. 398-402.

There are other studies, articles, and reviews that debate the efficacy of dissection to its alternatives. The general consensus, however, is that dissection alternatives, while useful for introductions to anatomy, fall flat where a greater depth of knowledge, which can only be gained through experience, is required. In other words, dissection alternatives work wonderfully in high school settings, but for the collegiate level, actual dissections are more valuable.

To find peer-reviewed literature on the topic, Google Scholar is a decent place to start, though your local library may have a partnership with a scholarly database which houses a collection of such articles. All college and university libraries have access to at least one such database, in addition to often having hard copies of the original publications, and if you can, I highly recommend using those resources.

OK!! Lol!!
I do not know what to say. *ahem* --__--
My limited knowledge has left me speechless. D: >_<
Well, at least it is a relief to hear that the deaths are painless and quick.
But still, it is sad.

Fact: Every year, billions of cattle, pigs, chickens, etc are killed for food in less humane conditions. Dissection is nothing compared to simple human diets.

' Course, not one of that stuff makes dissection acceptable.

Personally, I find dissecting too gross.

I wonder what PETA says about lab mice/rats. We've to kill them by spinal cord injury if necessary. Or puncture their eyes in a certain way so as not to affect them, yet obtain stuff you need for experimenting.

(I find these gross too.)