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
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