Vivisection: Clarified Perspective

To the Editors:

I’d like to clarify a couple of the points I made in a letter last issue regarding animal vivisection at Oberlin College. In the neuroscience labs I was discussing the animals are under anesthesia when holes are being drilled through their skulls. they are, however, fully awake during the actual experiment. In addition, I mistakenly stated last week that the animals are killed after the experiment is finished. This is not true — the rats are used for future experiments.
However, the basis of my argument has not changed. Students are manipulating the lives of sentient creatures for reasons of doubtful value. There may be some academic learning from these labs, but is that information worth the emotional and physical trauma to these animals? I don’t think so. People make the argument that medical testing on animals is necessary, but this is not medical testing and there are ways to teach students the same information and techniques without using dozens of rats every year. In order to justify using an animal in science I think that scientists must prove that there is an absolutely necessary reason for doing so, and in my opinion the Oberlin neuroscience department has not done that.
I am not calling for an end to all animal medical testing (though much of it is redundant and misleading,) but instead I am calling for an end to animal labs at Oberlin. One does not have to be an extremist on either side of this issue to recognize when animals are being used unnecessarily and inhumanely, and I believe that this is occurring every time one of these labs takes place at our school.

–Chris Holbein
College senior