Conference misery::feline_v1

    Does this apply to college also?  What will happen to Comparative
    Anatomy labs, which are all dissection?  I expect that if this law
    passes, students who express a dislike for dissection will simply
    be dissuaded from signing up for the Comparative Anatomy course.
    
    This implies that students will have two choices, dissect the cadavers
    or forget about taking the Pre-med major. 

    This is the update ---
    
    The bill applies to primary, junior high, and high schools --
    not to schools beyond high school -- who receive any financial
    support from the State of Massachusetts. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    I dissected frogs and fish in class, but never a cat.  The cat was
    left for the honors biology course, I took honors chemistry instead.
    I'll never forget sitting in class one day as a student from the
    honors biology class came in.  Over her shoulder she was carrying
    a stiff dead cat in a plastic bag.  I'll never forget that sight.
    
    I had no problems dissecting frogs and such, they had never been
    a pet.  But I could never have dissected a cat, it would have hit
    too close to home.  I would certainly understand it if my daughter
    or son didn't want to.
    
    I can see why teachers are opposed to it though.  It is a learning
    experience that you can't get from a book.
    
    If it is made optional, maybe the children who will go on to med careers
    will be smart enough to take it, while those who aren't planning
    on that won't.  But that would be too easy...

    

    Actually, you can get this experience without actually doing it
    live. MacIntosh now has an educational biology program out where
    you disect animals via computer instead of doing it live. All the
    working parts are there and, if I remember correctly, they are probably
    in better shape than most of the animals that I disected in High
    School.
    					Geoff

    >.4   I agree with Geoff.  There is an alternative and it should
  	  be used.  When trying to teach children of today to have more
    	  respect and kindness for the creatures we share the planet
    	  with, it would be better they weren't subjected to actual
    	  dissection of animals.  (A recent note in Canine re. problems
    	  occurring in the Maynard/Acton area could have evolved from
    	  just such "live" education.)
    

    I have mixed feelings about this. I think that if someone really
    objects, he/she should be able to opt out.
    
    on the other hand, I think of my vet who *really* loves cats and
    horses. Think of what she and all other vets had to go through in
    order to get into the field they may have wanted all their lives.
    
    There are just some things in this world that we have to put up
    with, no matter how much we dislike them. - like paying taxes,
    congress, etc.
    
    Bryan
    

    Yes, but not everyone wants to be a vet or a doctor. 
    
    And this bill isn't addressing COLLEGE students. It's about 
    kids thru grade 12. Advanced biology students probably want to
    be scientists of some type and I understand that they must do
    this experiment, however, the majority of students are not
    honors biology students and its for these kids that I think an
    option should be made.  What about the student who isn't going
    on to college, -  or will go to a two-year school, or to a 
    secretarial school, a business school, art school, or 
    any number of professions other than science. 
                                              
    
    
    

    Years ago, when I was a counselor at a boy's summer camp, I remember
    another counselor who was a premed student promptly seizing the
    opportunity to dissect a newly dead chipmunk for the boys. It was done
    with such a sense of wonderment and imparting of knowledge that the
    experience was a positive one for the boys.  Children can be very
    inquisitive, and if the right approach is taken, they can learn a lot
    about how the body works from looking at a real animal's insides. 
    
    Who knows? That counselor's infectious curiosity may have influenced
    some boy to persue a career that helped make a better world for
    humans and animals.
    
    I'm all for computer models of dissections, but not to take the place
    of actual dissections, just to prepare the student for what to expect.
    Incidentally, one of the things you learn from real dissections is
    that, in biology, things rarely fit the ideal model. By looking at the
    computer model and then doing the actual dissection, the student
    will invariably find exceptions to the theoretical. 
    
    Yes, we should be sensitive to peoples perceptions and not use animals
    generally regarded as 'pets.'  Perhaps the law ought to be amended to
    allow students to choose an alternative to a cat to dissect, a large
    rodent for example.  [Do I sense my cats cheering at this? :-)] 

    
    
    If we've been able to come up with computer programs for dissection,
    I don't see why we can't create situations outside the ideal
    model through them as well.  I would like to see as little dissection
    as possible of *all* animals.
    
    Carole 
    

    While I'm for using computer generated models of disection in general
    biology class, I am definitely against it in advanced biology classes
    or College level classes. In these cases actual disections of many
    different kinds of animals are necessary. I hate to say this but
    it really must be. Let us hope that the cats that get used are cats
    that were going to be destroyed by animal shelters anyway. At least
    they are being put to some sort of productive use. I know this is
    a horrible thing to say but since the cats or dogs are going to
    be destroyed they might as well be put to an educational use. Don't
    get me wrong, I hate the thought of any animal having to die
    unnecessarily. 
    
    						Geoff

    I guess the picture of each student a live frog and killing it (from
    a movie where the hero let them all go) is the one that sticks in
    my mind when the idea of disecting cats (or for that matter any
    animals) comes up.
    
    While it is some comfort to say that these animals were killed for
    other reasons, and is therefore moral does not quite wash with the
    reality of creating a demand for dead cats.
    
    No it would never happen --- this is different, well how about pet
    stores an puppy mills (kitty mills too) are there not enough kittens
    born every day to satisfy the need...... Create a demand and ecconomics
    takes over.
    
    I friend of mine (who has the respect for other creatures that I
    can only start to understand) says that once you start doing harm
    to what you consider lower creatures soon you are able to harm people
    you consider less than yourself.
    
                                        Tom

This is, has been, and will always be a very controversial issue and I 
am one of the people who is opposed to using animals in lab 
experiments.  Mainly due to the fact that so many of the universities 
and institutions funded for such experimentation have been found to be 
causing unnecessary pain and suffering to their animals without caring what
those creatures were feeling.  All this done not for science and 
medicine, but for "funding".  As long as there was a project, they 
could receive funding, whether the project was useless or beneficial 
didn't matter.  

I don't know where or how the grade schools and high schools get their 
"dead" lab cats, etc.  Maybe they are from the local shelters after 
euthanasia.  In that case, the animals feel no pain when used for 
educational purposes, this is true.  I just hope that the children and 
young adults performing the dissecting have a choice in doing it or 
not.

    Back in the 60s I was one of several grad student comparative anatomy
    lab instructors.  The faculty member in charge of the course told us
    that the cat cadavers supplied for lab dissection and study came from
    'cat farms.' There, cats are bred, killed and embalmed expressly for
    the biological supply companies from which colleges and universities
    order study specimens. 
    
    I was also told that, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
    faculty members actually took their students out into the back
    alleyways and obtained their own 'study material' amoung strays.  We've
    come along way since those 'dark' days! 

    Re  .14:  
    
    >.......The faculty member in charge of the course told us
    >that the cat cadavers supplied for lab dissection and study came from
    >'cat farms.' There, cats are bred, killed and embalmed expressly for
    >the biological supply companies from which colleges and universities
    >order study specimens. 
    
    Yes, but:
    
    1) that's what you _heard_.  I once heard a salesman tell a customer
    that one company made a color TV for a department store chain when
    I had personal knowledge that another did.  Did he visit that "cat
    farm"?  Is he sure that's where _all_ the cats came from?
    
    2) Most such "farms," be they cat or dog, are, relatively speaking
    Hellholes.  More than one "farm" has been closed at the direct
    instigation of humane societies.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    And recall that the claim is now more that 20 years old.

Such a tortured subject...but, I must admit, I disagree with reply .10
from the very personal standpoint of having had major surgery twice
in my life....I love my cats and hate the idea that a cat or dog
would suffer, but I want the surgeon who works on me to have a
thorough background in anatomy.  Until enough people will their
remains to science for all medical tranining needs, dissection
of animals will have to occur....not just to guarentee human health
and treatment of disease, but to assure advances in veternarian
medicine as well.

I don't believe a "machine model" of a dissection can educate as
well as dissecting an animal.  However, I do believe the courses
that have lab dissections should be elective, and not a required
course for graduation from high school or college if the student
is not in pre-med.

   
    What ever happened to this bill?  
    

    And to add my two cents into this discussion (a little late, but am
    trying to catch up after a long time out of touch with notes)... I
    still remember dissection from high school as one of the most
    disgusting things I ever had to do. (10th grade biology - required
    class for college prep.) 
        
    I never was planning to, nor plan to in the future be in any type of
    career that would need this knowledge. I really don't care to know
    about insides first hand thank you (this is someone who has trouble
    watching some M.A.S.H. episodes). The knowledge(?) that I gained from
    looking at the insides of creatures did me no good what-so-ever.
    In fact, it is something that I have tried to block from my mind.

    I'm almost positive,though, that the class didn't do a cat (for the one
    "large" animal the class did there was only one and the teacher would
    dissect it with the class watching). I do remember a pig (and remember
    standing way in the back, so I couldn't see a thing but still "lost
    lunch" for several days), so most likely I would remember something
    closer to the heart as a cat.  (BTW - I ended up with an "A" in the
    class - by doing good labs reports, using pictures from the
    encyclopedia we had a home.... pictures can work just as well!)
	
    I certainly would want medical persons, and other appropriate fields
    to have "real" experience, but I don't think it is necessary at
    all for the general junior high/high school public. Maybe a special
    "honors biology" in high school - since kids in that might be going
    into those fields.

    But I am still curious about the bill....
    
    janet b. (who can't even kill most bugs, unless we're on a 
    	      Kitty Bug Hunt  :-)   )