http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44271
This article is much more like the one I saw. The dog was a stray considered vicious and unadoptable. It was anesthetized before the procedure and euthanized afterward. The parents of the girls were contacted by phone and allowed to choose whether their daughters went or not. I don’t see a problem.
-Lil
You’re a sick, sick man, Trunk.
I like that! 
A few people have posted remarks such as “how else can the stdents learn”?
In High School, I never had the “chance” to see a dog’s digestive system in action. I guess I missed out on one of life’s most valuable educational opportunities. Is witnessing canine digestion a prerequsite for advanced scientific disciplines? Will it advance my career?
As others have said, is this even legal?
As Paul In Saudi said - what the Hell kind of substitute teacher actually does anything? By damn it when I was in school, we wanted our substitute teachers to leave us alone. If anything we’d want them to ask about Richard Hertz and Michael Hunt. They signed the attendance where were they?
Wonder how this would have “played in Utah” if the teacher had a discussion on gay marriage? :eek:
Does nobody here get the difference between dissection and vivisection? I witnessed (and carried out) dissections of dead animals, including a cat, in high school biology. But I would have drawn the line at vivisection of a living animal.
It’s okay because the animal was to be euthanized anyway? Using that logic, we ought to be able to vivisect death row inmates. Now there’s a learning experience for you. They were going to be euthanized anyway, right?
Doesn’t this belong in the pit? It certainly doesn’t seem mundane or pointless to me.
They’re animals, not people.
Vivisecting a dog scheduled for euthanasia for educational purposes seems to be a no-lose proposition here. It sounds like the tyoe of program we could expand a little if people didn’t get all bitched up just because it’s poor Fido on the carving board.
As a dog lover, this would make me sick and horrified and furious.
As a scientist / medic / doctor / whatever-in-training, with pure dispassion and objectiveness, I’d say it has its educational values and could even be fascinating.
I’m not sure what to think here.
Only part of you is “thinking”. The other part of you is “feeling”.
I love dogs, too. I’ve lived with a dog for 31 of my 33 years.
I’d eat a dog in a second if they tasted good. I have zero qualms whatsoever about vivsecting dogs in the classroom. They eat dogs in Korea. We eat cows here. A dog is just another animal. If my dog ended up at a kill shelter, and for whatever reason, I couldn’t claim him, I’d WANT him to be vivisected instead of euthanized. At least someone got something out of it.
If someone wants to ascribe human qualities to a dog because they make good pets, that’s their problem. They shouldn’t burden the world with their hangups.
Like ** Kythereia** , I’m torn on this, though not for the same reasons.
First, I’m impressed that a sub went out of his way to do something really valuable for the students. The subs when I was in school seemed to think their job was solely composed of taking attendance.
Second, I think vivisection can be very educational. I did it in college with chickens, and I’ll never forget how amazing it was to watch a heart working. I don’t think this incident was unethical. A trained vet performed the vivisection with the proper anesthesia. I think it’s better than just euthanizing the dog and incinerating the carcass. At least someone is benefitting from it.
My problem is that I think it’s a little too much for a high school class. This can be traumatic for college students. Because of the emotional toll that vivisection can inflict, I think it should be reserved for majors classes in college. Dissection, OTOH, should be done in high school and college general bio.
I can see how some of you don’t have a problem with it, since the students were given notice, and it was done in a professional manner, (the title made me think they grabbed a random dog, and started sliceing away right in the classroom).
But, I’d have to stay home that day, I think. I cried the day I had to witness the disection of a dead pig fetus. OMG! It was so cute, and pink.
God, I hated the pig fetus. There was something creepy about it…it was almost too human. Naked, pink, wrinkly, tiny…it was like dissecting a baby.
Count me in as one of the people who sees no problem with this. The kids could have opted out, the dog was going to die anyway, so why not make its life somewhat meaningful by providing some youngsters with some knowledge of biology and antomy?
I would have loved something like this in HS. As is was, I never disected a thing in highschool. Not. One. Thing. I disected a large grasshopper and a fish in fourth grade, but nothing after that until a college physiology class, where we did some pig surgery. If we had the time, it might have been a vivisection, but as it was, all we did was play around with the heart…feeling another animals heart beating in your hand is a weird sensation. The amusing ting abuot that day was that we were given a lunch partway through, which was mostly a sandwich bar, and sure enough…ther was ham! I actually don’t liek ham that much, but had a piece of it jsutbecause so many others couldn’t bring themselves to eat it.
<smacks Trunk with wet trout>
<HARD!>
WHAP!
My mother, way back in the 1920s refused to participate in disecting a cat. This infuriated the instructor, or so I was told and when another cat was needed, he informed my mother that she WOULD chloroform the poor beast or fail the class and face expulsion. According to multipile sources, she took the kitty in her arm, dropped the chloroform bottle and fled the class, taking the kitty home with her. The teacher folded, she passed the class, and the kitty lived to a ripe old age. My mother was quite the lady when all was said and done.
Dog and cat owner here also, also spent many years doing dressage in my youth.
I have eaten both dog and horse. Dog is good in any pork or goat/lamb recipe, expecially good with garlic and ginger korean style. Horse is good in almost any beef recipe, but especially in beef burgundy and rouladen of sliced meat, asparagus and shredded onion. Never had the opportunity to have cat.
Heck I keep and slaughter chickens, and sheep. If it isnt a ‘pet’ animal it is food. A pet is something I raise as a companion animal. I could kennel raise dogs for food if I wanted to without getting attatched to them. FWIW, I do actually have a pet chicken and a pet rooster that are fat and happy, and very safe from the axe. Their progeny are tasty when cooked correctly=)
It’s the “observed by high schoolers” part that worries me, really. I remember what high schoolers are like, and I worry that they’d see it as a demonstration of how to vivisect a dog rather than a demonstration of the complexity and function of the organs in vertebrates… and would then attempt to apply their newfound knowledge.
They do taste good!! I’ve pet dogs, I’ve played with dogs, and I’ve eaten dog.
I’ve also done much worse things to a sedated mammal than vivisection!!!
If anyone claims this was illegal, then please show the law that was violated. I can’t see the problem with this.
Also, “substitute teacher” does not always mean “teacher for the day”. It’s possible the regular teacher is on maturnity leave or injured or something. If he/she will be gone for a long period, usually an equally qualified teacher will be placed in the class until the regular one returns. We don’t know this particular “substitute’s” credentials. He was referred to as a “Biology Teacher”. He probably has a degree in Biology and many years teaching experience. Maybe something in his life right now prevents him from teaching permanantly. My bet, though, is that he was once a well respected full time teacher.
And those who thing it’s “too gross” for high schoolers, or think “Well, I could never do that!!”… you probably wouldn’t have signed up for Advanced Human Anatomy in the first place.
I’ve seen plenty of necropsies on freshly euthanized animals and guess what? The digestive tract is still moving! Yep. It may not be as nice and pink as it is when they are alive but it keeps on moving for a while, it’s rather creepy actually. Okay, so you can’t see the lungs fill or the heart beat in a dead animal but why is that really necessary? This was high school students, not med school or vet school. There are so many options to vivisection that I see no reason for it. In fact if this was advanced human anatomy and physiology they might have benefitted more from watching a human surgery.
By the way, if the anesthesia is not deep enough the animal can feel you pulling on it’s insides and it reacts. So it is possible for it to feel pain even with anesthesia. Anesthesia is not equal to analgesia. As vetbridge pointed out, there are no guarantees it was done 100% accurately and pain free. The only way to guarantee no pain would be if the animal had been euthanized first.
Keep your deviance to yourself, please and thank you.
:eek:
That’s a very old dog.
I have to admit I was a little let down reading about the anesthesia, the vet’s office, etc etc. I read “Utah” and “substitute teacher” and was all set to read about some wild-eyed cowboy sadist with a hunting knife threatening to gut anybody who tried to leave the classroom.
Having just undergone a c-section, I can tell you that while I could feel the tugging and pulling I could feel no pain at all. It was the strangest sensation in the universe, but it was not one whit painful. I was fully concious and my innards were in proper working order. I see no reason why the same sort of drugs couldn’t be used with the dog. Assuming that was the case, I would have zero problem with it. After all, I had no problem with the four med students and two first-year residents who were in the operating room watching the surgery. They were pretty much watching a human vivisection, only I was sewn back together afterwards.
The fact that the dog was euthanized after the surgery is a separate issue. I supoose if they wanted, they could have sewn him back up again and let him go on biting kids. But that wasn’t his fate.
In fact, as I am donating my body after death (to organ donation and then research), I’ll go one step further and offer to donate my body to vivisection at brain death, but while things are still working. Go ahead. Bring all the students in you want to watch while they harvest my usable organs and let 'em poke around and hold the rest. Why the hell should I care anyway?