Neuroscience
Rats
To
the Editors:
I
am writing in regard to the vivisecting of rats in Oberlin neuroscience
labs. Oberlin neuroscience majors are required to cut open the heads
of rats and stick electrodes into their brains in order to stimulate
certain parts of the brain. Not only is this disgustingly cruel,
but it serves no legitimate purpose. The professors already know
what’s going to happen when the electrodes are applied. The
only reason to perform vivisection is to become practiced at manipulating
other creatures’ brains. There is no legitimate use for this
knowledge that could possibly justify the excessive cruelty visited
on these rats. No one needs to perform a vivisection to learn about
biology. There are plenty of ways to teach biology without such
exploitation. All arguments for continuing to perform vivisection—as
well as medical and cosmetic experimentation on animals—are
based on a view of non-human animals as expendable objects to be
held in captivity, tortured, experimented upon, and killed for our
own purposes. It is extremely selfish, cruel, inhumane and unnecessary.
The human race has lived for thousands of years without animal testing,
and any “progress” that requires such cruelty is not
worth acheiving. The ends DO NOT justify the means. Cruelty for
the sake of science should not be acceptable to people. Animals
are not tools. They are living, breathing, feeling creatures with
the same desire to live freely as any human.
–Abe
Duncanson
College sophomore
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