During finals week in spring, rather than taking a test or handing in a paper, students in Concord Academy’s ninth-grade biology are instead greeted with the smell of formaldehyde. Having already submitted their final project the week before, freshmen spend their final biology class dissecting a fetal pig. In this dissection, students explore organs that make up the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems—all of which were discussed earlier in the semester. However, with the strong smell of preservatives and the strange substances coming out of some organs, the experience is not entirely pleasant. Nevertheless, students can enjoy many tasks, including filling the lungs with air, observing the different chambers in the heart, and feeling the bumps of the trachea.
The practice of dissecting animals has been around for a very long time. In fact, in ancient Greece, accounts of animal dissections first appeared around 500 BCE. Dissections have led to important discoveries. For instance, in the early 1600s, a physician, William Harvey, used a dissection to determine that the heart was responsible for the circulation of blood in the body. In the 1500s, dissection started to be used for educational purposes. By the 1920s, pre-college education in America began to incorporate dissections into schooling. Now, every year, over 12 million animal dissections are performed in American classrooms.
While dissections provide students with a hands-on learning opportunity, there are moral and educational concerns with the practice. For one, the way animals are treated on their way to dissection is often brutal. Sometimes, dogs and cats are killed in shelters for the purpose of dissection when they could potentially be adopted in the future. Cats have especially been known to endure callous treatment while being gathered. It is incredibly sad that these animals’ lives are cut short when they could have lived a better life in the future. Moreover, frogs—the most commonly dissected animal—are removed directly from their natural habitat for the sole purpose of dissection. Not only is the process by which they are collected and then killed cruel, but the subtraction of frogs from their homes can potentially cause disruptions in countless ecosystems. Another concern with dissections is that they can negatively affect students emotionally by inducing disgust, potentially harming their ability to learn. These concerns have led to a few alternatives to dissection being created. For example, students can perform quasi-dissections on three-dimensional models of animal bodies constructed out of clay or plastic. Another alternative is for students to watch videos of an expert dissecting an animal. Finally, there are many computer programs in which students can complete online dissections.
While these alternatives do eliminate the drawbacks presented by standard dissections, none of the alternatives offer students an experience that is hands-on while accurately representing bones and organs. Some argue that dissections can inspire students in ways that alternatives simply cannot. Furthermore, the vast majority of teachers support dissection: according to Britannica, “A 2022 study found that 83% of teachers surveyed in Switzerland agreed that ‘dissection is a valuable part of teaching biology in schools,’ while 70% disagreed that ‘alternatives are just as good as animals or animal parts for teaching biology.’”
So, as a CA student, how should one feel about the fetal pig dissection? From an educational standpoint, there are arguments to be made for both dissections and for alternatives. From a moral standpoint, it should be noted that pigs live in extremely harsh conditions under the meat industry. Many argue that using fetal pigs—whose mothers had been killed for meat—for dissections is therefore inhumane. However, others argue that using the fetal pig for dissection avoids waste. Do you think CA should think about using alternatives? Or do you think that continuing the dissection will be the most beneficial to students?
Sources: https://www.britannica.com/procon/animal-dissection-debate, https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Harvey, https://www.pcrm.org/news/good-science-digest/dissection-alternatives-students, https://awionline.org/content/dissection-alternatives, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10244783/