By The Editors

It’s the classic high school sitcom – teen animal lover protests cutting open baby frogs, stands up for the voiceless creatures by setting them free and then jeers at the school for inhumane treatment.

Let’s face it, cutting open a dead frog as it’s pinned to an aluminum pan is enough to make anyone, even those with the strongest stomach, a little queasy. Once entering college, however, if the thought of killing animals in the name of science makes you vomit (or cry), students can simply opt out of these classes. There are many other science courses offered at the University for those needing to complete core courses. However, for students who are biology majors, dissection is both an essential and very real part of their four years of course work and no upset stomach or personal and moral protest protect them from picking up the scalpel.

The Student Organization for Animal Rights (SOAR) and the Progressive Student Union are fighting to provide students who are religiously, ethically or morally against dissection, other alternatives. These alternatives include dissection kits, as well as computer programs that provide simulated dissections. A referendum asking students to vote on whether the University should provide such options will appear on the ballots of the Student Government Association elections in April.

The entire student body should not be given the opportunity to decide what should be practice for student biologists, since most know little or nothing about the benefits and harms of animal dissection – except they love their cats, dogs and rabbits. Most will also never have to take part in such dissections.

If students have such a strong conviction against dissection, biology is probably not the field for them. While SOAR and the Progressive Student Union say that alternatives are just as effective, if not more so, than the actual dissection process, nothing can take the place of holding a scalpel in your hand and making an incision. The first time to test your ability to slice a living or dead organism shouldn’t be in med school. College is the time to make mistakes and learn from them, not when someone’s life is on the line.

College is also the time for hands-on experiences. In order to learn about certain diseases, organisms and body parts, students need to see and touch them up close and personal in a living host, not through the protection of a computer screen. Computers can teach and provide many opportunities for students, but there comes a time when students need to turn off the monitor and start living for themselves.

Humans design these textbooks and computer programs, but the functions of the human body and animal organisms are rarely “textbook cases.” The only way to truly understand how they operate is to see for yourself.

Students do not get to choose what books they want to read or opt to watch the movie version instead (though many try). In the same way, if a professor feels dissection is an important and necessary part of the course, students should not have the option of not completing this part of the course work.

SOAR also argues that implementing alternatives will save money. However, while this would be true if the University totally eliminated the dissection process, the biology department will still need to purchase the same supplies, plus extra kits and programs for those who decide not to take part in the designed course work.

While testing beauty products (shampoos and makeup) on animals should be outlawed because they are performed in the name of vanity, dissecting animals for medical purposes helps students learn skills and research techniques that could save lives.