Programs & Campaigns

Action Alert!

OSERA

November 5, 2003

On October 28, CNS News issued an article lauding a new science curriculum from the Ohio Scientific Education & Research Association (OSERA). OSERA is an affiliate of the pro-vivisection network, States United for Biomedical Research.

OSERA recently developed a grade 4-8 educational program designed to inculcate the pro-vivisection agenda on students to “counter humane education.” CNS News reports that OSERA is launching their curriculum in 42 Ohio elementary and middle schools.

Ohio is a microcosm of our country:  a place where science education begins with the indoctrination that harming animals is status quo. Dissection – the cutting up of dead animals for scientific study – is an established rite of passage nationwide. Dissection can be introduced as early as elementary school.  

Only a handful of states have laws protecting students’ rights to choose educationally and humanely superior dissection alternatives. Elsewhere, if students refuse on ethical principle, teachers have the right to fail, academically penalize or otherwise force them to do "the lesson." There is no dissection choice law in Ohio.

NEAVS could not disagree more with OSERA's view that through humane education "all of a sudden, kids become zealots for a cause that they really don't completely understand, and they have never been given the whole picture." In truth, the pro-vivisection industry saturates our media and education with its cruel, unnecessary and self-profiting agenda. Humane curriculum is an antidote to this cultural assault on compassion.

OSERA’s $500 curriculum “Playbook” includes a board game designed to show children the “real reason why there is animal research.” In reality, no one wins this game but the money-making vivisection industry. Nearly 40 million animals lose every year.

NEAVS opposition to vivisection also rests firmly on the fact that it is unnecessary, a waste of money and resources, and is misleading. OSERA’s curriculum undoubtedly excludes incriminating facts about vivisection such as:

• Over 100,000 Americans die annually from adverse reactions to drugs previously tested on animals
  

• The use of penicillin was delayed because of animal research
  

• Many people continued to be fatally exposed to asbestos because scientists failed to reproduce cancer in animals
  

Fortunately, NEAVS and Friends of Washoe/ Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) have developed A Compassionate Interdisciplinary Science Curriculum to neutralize the pro-vivisection agenda in our schools. NEAVS and CHCI collaborated on this curriculum to teach students that science and compassion can go hand-in-hand.

Our “Next of Kin Curriculum” introduces students to critical thinking about the use of animals in science. It boldly challenges the assumptions behind animal experimentation. The “Next of Kin Curriculum” is now available for grades 2-5 and grades 6-9.What You Can Do

• Donate copies of the “Next of Kin Curriculum” to your local elementary and/or middle school. 

• Contact NEAVS for your FREE copy of From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse - a resource for dissection alternatives. Donate it to your local library or university.

• Ask your school or your child’s school to implement a dissection choice policy.

• Contact NEAVS for a FREE dissection choice starter kit.

• Write to Ohio’s Board of Education president Jennifer Sheets at Ohio Department of Education Building, 25 S. Front St., 7th Floor, Columbus, Ohio 43215-4183. Remind them that education must be fair and unbiased and insist that Next Of Kin accompany any and all OSERA lesson plans.
  

Thank you for your support of NEAVS and our work on behalf of animals in education, product testing and the laboratory.

Action Alert!
> Project R&R
> Ask Revlon to Join Leaping Bunny Program
> UnBEARable Suffering

Brochures
> View download options
> Cats
> Chimpanzees
> Rats
> Greyhounds