Dissecting Life’s True Value

Re “Biology Class Rite Hits a Nerve,” March 13: C.S. Lewis states: “In justifying cruelty to animals, we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.” It is an outrage that schools are rushing into the jungle by reintroducing the dissection of mammals, despite the availability of software programs that far more effectively teach the very objectives in biology that the archaic dissection method used to teach. I firmly agree with Dr. Jerry Vlasak’s statement: “No surgeon in this country learns how to be a surgeon by dissecting animals.” A good doctor is first and foremost compassionate.

Dissection and vivisection tend to enable students to be anything but! Lewis calls the Darwinian approach that humans are superior to all other forms of life a sentiment and challenges: “Try to base it on logic and see what happens!”

Worst of all, dissection and vivisection keep deserving students out of the biology class because either they or their parents are morally opposed to dissection. Please help inspire our students wishing to become doctors to be compassionate and logical by keeping dissection and vivisection out of our school and college curricula, both public and private.

Katrelya Angus

Sierra Madre