Stop Inhumanity: Save the Rats

To the Editors:

Next week in the Neuroscience 211 lab students will be asked to participate in a vivisection lab involving the use of rats. We would like to urge the students in these classes to consider abstaining from these experiments.
In the lab, fully-conscious rats will have their heads cut open and electrical nodes will be attached to their brains. Electrical charges will then be sent to stimulate the “pleasure centers” in the rats’ brains. Following the completion of these actions, the rats will be killed.
This practice shows utter disregard for animal life and animal suffering, and in our opinion should not be justified under the guises of “academic freedom.” Some reasons to object to these “experiments” are as follow: these tests are redundant – Professors and students know full well how the rats are going to react and why, thus adding nothing new to science. The “results” of these practices and the procedure itself can be realisitcally mimicked using inexpensive computer simulations.
While we believe that no animal should be treated in such a manner, it is especially appalling to do this to creatures as intelligent and sensitive as rats. Rats have highly developed central nervous systems, can feel pain, and suffer from the stress of confinement leading up to the experiment. Just ask any person with “pet” rats and they’ll tell you these are loving and social creatures.
It is also important to note that a student can go all the way through medical school and successfully become a doctor without ever having tested on animals. Medical schools at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia have eliminated animal labs, and students going into scientific research have all sorts of non-animal research methods at their disposal that are respected in the field and are cutting edge. Numerous grants nowadays fund non-animal methods in particular for this very reason. The future of science and curing human diseases does not lie in animal experimentation.
These labs are set to occur next week. They are not saving any human lives and are excessively cruel and inhumane. Please tell the various science departments at Oberlin that it is time for them to live up to our school’s progressive tradition of ethical decisions and eliminate all animal labs from Oberlin.

–Natalie Stamm
College junior

–Chris Holbein
College senior