© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Students are becoming desensitized to animal
suffering through dissection in science classes, charges animal rights group
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals, which is urging schools to stop the practice.
PETA sent a letter to principals in Charlotte County, Fla., stating
dissection "teaches students that animals are simply convenient tools to be
thrown away like pencils when they are no longer of any use," the Port
Charlotte, Fla., Sun-Herald reported.
"Dissection research shows that students who are desensitized to animal
suffering and abuse have a good chance of becoming desensitized to human
suffering," the letter said.
PETA wants animal dissections to be replaced with activities such as
virtual dissections on computers. School officials, however, say that is not
likely.
Dissection, if done correctly, is a good way for students to learn,
especially if they are pursuing a health-related career, said Jackie Speake,
Charlotte County's curriculum and instruction specialist for science.
"To me it's an invaluable tool," she told the Sun-Herald. "I know our
teachers use it in a very productive way."
Classes that use the computer programs still use dissection, Speake said,
adding it's up to the teachers to decide.
PETA's letter was sent the same day the group urged the Florida State
Attorney's Office to "vigorously prosecute" a Charlotte County 13-year-old
accused of killing an 8-week-old kitten, the paper said.
On its website, PETA encourages students to "take a
stand" against dissection, even to the point of pressing a legal case
based on "religious beliefs."
PETA says:
Meet with the instructor right away and tell him or her that you
cannot participate in the dissection because of your "sincerely held
religious and moral beliefs about the sanctity of all life," and ask for a
non-animal alternative. These words provide the basis for a possible legal
case. (You do not have to support any formal religion; the courts have
interpreted a belief that animals should not be killed for classroom
dissection to be a religious belief, which schools cannot
violate.)
The group says "more and more students –from elementary school to
veterinary and medical school – are taking a stand against dissection before
it happens in their classes."
The practice, says the group, is "disgusting, it's wrong, and it's time for
it to end. And now you are ready to fight dissection!"
PETA is known for its headline-grabbing campaigns on behalf of animals. In
April, the animal-rights group, which claims "750,000 members and supports" offered
the town of Hamburg, N.Y., $15,000 in veggie burgers if it officially
changed its name to "Veggieburg."
A
PETA campaign called "Holocaust on Your Plate" compared chickens
slaughtered at factory farms to the Jews annihilated in Nazi death camps.
"Just as the Nazis tried to 'dehumanize' Jews by forcing them to live in
filthy, crowded conditions," said a PETA press release relaunching the
campaign in February, "animals on today's factory farms are stripped of all
that is enjoyable and natural to them and treated as nothing more than meat-,
egg-, and milk-making 'machines.'"
PETA also condemned the U.S. military's use of dolphins and sea lions in
the Iraq war to help clear underwater mines.
