To dissect or not to dissect?

[The 1 and Only Lady Gaga]

I am going to have a Biology class in 2 days time, and I am going to have to dissect a frog.

It's already dead, so I won't have that much qualms about dissecting it.
But I personally feel that it is immoral to kill these poor creatures just for the sake of studying them, especially when we can have computer-generated images to study instead. How would we humans like it, if lets say some very intelligent alien-beings took over the Earth, and they cut us up for the sake of studying?

Of course, this is completely debatable. What do you guys think?

 

[MrIndigo]

Read "At The Mountains of Madness", by HP Lovecraft.

 

[Demoness]

I am going to have a Biology class in 2 days time, and I am going to have to dissect a frog.

It's already dead, so I won't have that much qualms about dissecting it.
But I personally feel that it is immoral to kill these poor creatures just for the sake of studying them, especially when we can have computer-generated images to study instead. How would we humans like it, if lets say some very intelligent alien-beings took over the Earth, and they cut us up for the sake of studying?

Of course, this is completely debatable. What do you guys think?

Why would i care if they cut me up? I'm already dead so i won't be caring. Now if they did while i was still alive then i would be worrying.

edit: sometimes, you learn more from doing stuff hadns on then studying a picture

 

[Eggbert]

It's already dead. It won't know you are cutting it up.

 

[Fishy]

You don't know that the frogs were hunted down and killed just to be dissected. In my junior year of High school, we dissected cats in my Anatomy class as like, the last thing we did before the final, and they were cats taken from the Animal Shelter after they had already died of natural causes or whatever. The dissection was awesome; I broke the cat's jaw? For fun?

 

[Alan]

Its not like the frog is going to use its body for anything anyway. I'll probably donate my body to science when I die, not like I'm going to be using it, maybe some young aspiring doctor can make better use of it.

 

[earthpeople]

The frogs are bred specifically for dissection in most cases.
In fact, I don't know of any school where they go out and hunt for frogs for students to cut up, but it's possible I just haven't heard about it.

 

[icepick]

I'm a vegetarian, and I've had to dissect cats and cow eyes, etc in anatomy. At first I was a bit weary, but I guess from a utilitarian viewpoint education is significant in the development of technology and for the benefit of humanity.

 

[cantab]

If one is not a vegetarian, then why is dissecting an animal any worse than eating it? Arguing that eating is essential doesn't work, since millions of vegetarians prove eating animals is not essential.

Indeed, since images and computer technological cannot presently teach you anything like what you will learn from actual dissection, whereas plants are fully capable of providing required nutrition, dissecting an animal is more justifiable than eating it.

If one is a vegetarian, then of course it would be entirely consistent to decline to do the dissection.

 

[Tsunami]

It's already dead. It won't know you are cutting it up.

The frogs are bred specifically for dissection in most cases.
In fact, I don't know of any school where they go out and hunt for frogs for students to cut up, but it's possible I just haven't heard about it.

If one is not a vegetarian, then why is dissecting an animal any worse than eating it? Arguing that eating is essential doesn't work, since millions of vegetarians prove eating animals is not essential.

Indeed, since images and computer technological cannot presently teach you anything like what you will learn from actual dissection, whereas plants are fully capable of providing required nutrition, dissecting an animal is more justifiable than eating it.

If one is a vegetarian, then of course it would be entirely consistent to decline to do the dissection.

Theres nothing really immoral about it.

 

[Mike B]

I was totally disgusted at the idea of dissecting an animal and I got out of doing it.

 

[Fier]

Dissecting a frog was the best part of my Biology class. It wasn't the thrill of cutting up an already dead animal or the sick joy of hearing the noises it made as I cut off unnecessary parts, it was the hands on experience of learning what made the frog tick. If you can sit at a computer and play a point and click game of open the frog then go ahead but to me it's just like reading a book with more diagrams in it.

Do Physics. More experiments, less dead things! ... Sometimes.

 

[BinarySolo]

Never dissected a frog in Science class, but I did dissect a cow's heart and a sardine. I'm doing Physics this year anyway, so maybe I'll cut up dead things less, like Fier said.

 

[FattyButt]

I used to be a Vegitarian until I was fourteen. Then one day I ate meat. It was damn tasty.

IF you don't disect the frog, someone else most likely WILL. The frog is already dead. You can either choose to use it as a learning experience, or have someone else cut it up. OR, no one cuts it up and it rots. Either way, protesting dissection and anti-meat beliefs will hardly get you anywhere. You will seldom convince people who eat meat to give it up.

Someone IS going to buy that steak. Why not you? Either way, the cow is dead, and its going to be eaten.

My two cents, anyhow.

 

[trilog]

animals are not as sentient as humans. they do not know they are about to die. they may feel pain, but they don't know they're about to die. thus, I think brutally killing animals isn't right. big emphasis on brutally. I have no problem with eating meat. in fact, it's fucking tasty and I'll be damned if I ever stop using my birthright omnivore teeth.

the big flaw with groups who believe in animal liberation is that they're one big, fat double standard. you hear all this talk about saving cows, dogs, cats and turkeys, but what about other animals? what about any and every other animal being killed or hunted? no one gives a shit about them because they're not cute.

OP you should just dissect it. it's already dead and like previously noted, someone else will dissect it. all you'd be doing is prolonging its dissection.

 

[Wishy]

How would we humans like it, if lets say some very intelligent alien-beings took over the Earth, and they cut us up for the sake of studying?

meh, humans already dissect each other anyways. ;)


But I see nothing wrong with it. The frogs are bred specifically to be dissected, so they live nice healthy lives until they are silently killed (Probably not painfully at all).

In my bio class last year we got to dissect infant pigs, which came from the wombs of mother pigs who were about to killed for meat. The baby pigs had no chance at life, so might as well but their tiny dead bodies to good use.

Though, I find it absolutely disgusting when people hack up the bodies and make a mess and cut and snip just for shits and giggles. At least the respect the animal's body and take care when you are dissecting it...

 

[cantab]

IF you don't disect the frog, someone else most likely WILL. The frog is already dead. You can either choose to use it as a learning experience, or have someone else cut it up. OR, no one cuts it up and it rots. Either way, protesting dissection and anti-meat beliefs will hardly get you anywhere. You will seldom convince people who eat meat to give it up.

Someone IS going to buy that steak. Why not you? Either way, the cow is dead, and its going to be eaten.

This argument is similar to one often given for not voting - "my vote won't make any difference". True, one person declining to dissect a frog in class makes little difference. But if every vegan and vegetarian declines, that makes a HUGE difference. (Best case scenario: schools start asking BEFORE obtaining the frogs, which makes students aware that they CAN refuse without risking punishment, and the number of animals dissected in the country drops significantly). And there doesn't need to be any organisation if everyone simply acts based on their morals and feelings, rather than resorting to the "it's dead anyway" / "my vote makes no difference" argument.

animals are not as sentient as humans. they do not know they are about to die. they may feel pain, but they don't know they're about to die.

Evidence please.

Do Physics. More experiments, less dead things! ... Sometimes.

Do Geology. More travelling, still plenty of dead things!

 

[Thund91]

I could never do that...Thank god I didn't have to in high school. I know it's dead but it's still disgusting to me. That and frogs are so cute so I can't imagine cutting one open. Nothing against it but I just wouldn't be able to do it myself.

 

[Eggbert]

Vegetarians are nice, but humans have and always will eat meat and while they can reduce this a bit, they will never stop or slow it greatly.

However, if more students responded, it could really stop or reduce frog dissections. Which would be sad.

 

[trilog]

This argument is similar to one often given for not voting - "my vote won't make any difference". True, one person declining to dissect a frog in class makes little difference. But if every vegan and vegetarian declines, that makes a HUGE difference. (Best case scenario: schools start asking BEFORE obtaining the frogs, which makes students aware that they CAN refuse without risking punishment, and the number of animals dissected in the country drops significantly). And there doesn't need to be any organisation if everyone simply acts based on their morals and feelings, rather than resorting to the "it's dead anyway" / "my vote makes no difference" argument.

this is where your argument falls short. not everyone has the same morals and values. not everyone gives a shit about the tiny frog. my entire science class dissected the frog (7th grade) and in my sophomore year, everyone but 1 dissected the pig (the smell got to her). and in my anatomy class everyone dissected the cat. obviously the margin of error here is pretty large, but my point is that a lot of people simply don't care. if science and the evolution of our species is at risk because of a moral, we'd get nowhere (I suppose if you need an example you could look at The Dark Ages which loosely fits what I'm saying). you do realize a lot of medicine was tested on animals first, right? I'm not saying there is much to be gained out of dissecting a frog, but it's the principle of the matter.

Evidence please.

evidence? what evidence do you need? go hold a knife up to one of your pets and it'll stand there like, "what the fuck are you doing?" it hasn't learned knives are dangerous. as a baby you didn't know knives were dangerous either. you learned from other people or maybe even personal experience. so unless there's a pet mothership beaming down information to your animals, it has no clue what a knife is and how dangerous they can be.

if a cow was treated right on the way to the slaughterhouse (remember, I am against animal brutality because I know animals are sentient) and treated it properly before it died, how will it know it was being sent a place of animal murder? treat it humanely before it dies and give it a humane death (a painless syringe with painless chemicals that kill it almost, if not instantaneously) how is it going to know you were killing it? it might think it's on its way to the best spa treatment in Bovineland.

you need no study when you can prove it yourself. hands on experience just like dissecting frogs, eh?

 

[cantab]

this is where your argument falls short. not everyone has the same morals and values. not everyone gives a shit about the tiny frog.

Not everyone has the same morals, but that does not change my argument - that in this case, by people making their morals known, they can reduce - though not eliminate - what they see as harm.

evidence? what evidence do you need? go hold a knife up to one of your pets and it'll stand there like, "what the fuck are you doing?" it hasn't learned knives are dangerous.

Perhaps I misinterpreted your statement. I interpreted you as implying there is no circumstance an animal can know it is about to die. Such a sweeping claim needs good evidence - tests should be designed so that if an animal is capable of knowing something will kill it, it SHOULD know that. For example, kill several animals with a gun of highly distinctive appearance while several more animals watch the events. Will the remaining animals attempt to avoid being shot?

Of course there can be specific scenarios where one cannot know it is about to die - but the same goes for humans, you can be shot in the head by a sniper with no knowledge it's about to happen.

In the case of usual animal slaughter - animals on the farm see other animals go off in trucks and never come back. Who knows what, if anything, the remaining animals believe happens to the ones in the truck?

 

[trilog]

Perhaps I misinterpreted your statement. I interpreted you as implying there is no circumstance an animal can know it is about to die. Such a sweeping claim needs good evidence - tests should be designed so that if an animal is capable of knowing something will kill it, it SHOULD know that. For example, kill several animals with a gun of highly distinctive appearance while several more animals watch the events. Will the remaining animals attempt to avoid being shot?

understandable to misinterpret as I didn't clarify. I did say they are less sentient, which is irrefutably true, but they are still sentient beings. animals learn by experience if they don't inherently know it. a dog will not jump off a cliff (instinct), but a dog will not fear a knife unless it has previous knowledge of it (assuming it retained memory of the experience).

Of course there can be specific scenarios where one cannot know it is about to die - but the same goes for humans, you can be shot in the head by a sniper with no knowledge it's about to happen.

precisely. I originally proposed an absurd scenario where a human is completely oblivious to any danger but I edited it out to avoid being redundant. however, this is how I feel animals should be killed.

 

[FattyButt]

This argument is similar to one often given for not voting - "my vote won't make any difference". True, one person declining to dissect a frog in class makes little difference. But if every vegan and vegetarian declines, that makes a HUGE difference. (Best case scenario: schools start asking BEFORE obtaining the frogs, which makes students aware that they CAN refuse without risking punishment, and the number of animals dissected in the country drops significantly). And there doesn't need to be any organisation if everyone simply acts based on their morals and feelings, rather than resorting to the "it's dead anyway" / "my vote makes no difference" argument.

In this case, my vote DOES make no difference. Although it might in the political world, people will never stop eating meat. Its damn tasty. As long as there is still profit to be made in the meat business, companies will still slaughter animals.

Dissection is different, however. In a classroom of 30 people, a vote can make a difference. However, I seriously doubt that dissection will be taken out of classrooms. I've dissected frogs and cats, and done the simulations too. For some reason, doing the hands on experience taught me much more. I believe it's been proven that humans learn better when they have tactile or physical interactions with the thing they're learning. Its how we're wired.

 

[Scimjara]

Go for it.. I've done it before and it wasn't a pleasant sight

 

[Lexi]

The only reason why I wouldn't dissect an animal is because it's really disgusting. But anyway, I have done it before, but it wasn't a frog, it was a pig fetus. It was super gross. 8|