Programs & Campaigns

A Voice for All Animals

October 14, 2004

Dear Editor:

The blithe tone of "Dissection Club not for squeamish" (Oct. 12) was an injustice to the 6-8 million animals killed each year for classroom dissections.

Animals bound for classrooms endure unimaginable suffering during capture, transport and slaughter. Many are wild-caught such as frogs from already dwindling and endangered populations. Students often handle animals preserved with known carcinogens later to be returned to the environment as chemical-laden body parts. Fortunately, humane, affordable (often free) and environmentally healthy alternatives like interactive software programs make classroom animal dissections obsolete. Alternatives are also educationally sound -- 28 separate studies demonstrate that students using alternative dissection methods performed as well as, if not better than, students using specimens.

As students and teachers begin a new school year, we hope that humane science classrooms that cultivate inquisitive and compassionate young scientists will take the future of science in a new, evolved and infinitely more productive path -- one where all species and our interrelationship with them really matters.

Sincerely,
Theodora Capaldo, Ed.D.
President
New England Anti-Vivisection Society
and its education affiliate
the Ethical Science and Education Coalition