Trulie Nobis, a Monroe Community College student, is battling the school to allow her an alternative to dissecting an animal for her biology class. |
Democrat and Chronicle
(March 10, 2001) -- First comes the skinning of the cat carcasses.
Later the dissection, as students learn the inner workings of life.
For most in Monroe Community College's Biology 142 class, dissection is an accepted part of the introduction to anatomy.
For Trulie Nobis, it's an atrocity.
The MCC student has joined a debate being argued on college campuses around the nation, as students increasingly question the educational role of cutting up animals.
"It's showing a total lack of respect for life," said Nobis, 25, of Brighton.
The debates at colleges and high schools date back almost to the start of the animal rights movement in the 1970s. But the dissection clashes have increased in recent years, said Wayne Carley, executive director of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Arlington, Va.
Animal-protection groups are trying to whittle away at the use of dissection. And an industry offering dissection alternatives such as high-tech computer programs has sprung up in the past few years.
Nobis is at loggerheads with MCC's administration over the biology class' dissection requirement and the college's refusal to allow her some alternative to the cutting.
The course description for Biology 142 [Human Anatomy, ed.] makes it clear dissection is part of the class. But Nobis said she had hoped the school would allow her to use some alternative. In meetings with administrators, she brought a CD-ROM of physiology information and a plastic cat model. She also offered to instead dissect human cadavers the school has for other courses.
The school in February rejected her request. She is appealing. If the appeal fails, she and her husband, Nathan, indicated that a lawsuit could follow.
MCC officials declined to be interviewed but issued a statement this week indicating they will not back down.
"At MCC, our faculty -- who are experienced in their fields and active in their professional organizations -- have endorsed the academic merit of dissection and included it in certain courses," the statement read.
According to MCC, the school has lower-level biology courses that require little or no dissection.
Nobis, who is getting prerequisites out of the way at MCC before studying at a four-year school to become a dietitian, said college officials also suggested she find another school.
However, she contended, those lower-level courses may not transfer, and MCC has an obligation to her.
"It's my local community college. My choosing another college, that was never any option," she said.
The Humane Society of the United States has unleashed a hip snowboarding frog on America as part of the barrage that animal-advocacy groups are aiming against dissection.
Meet Extreme Frog. The cartoon character in the advertising campaign lives on the edge because it never knows when it might "wake up dead, floating in formaldehyde, looking up at some kid with a scalpel."
The Humane Society of the United States, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, and the American Anti-Vivisection Society all have programs where they will lend out dissection alternatives, ranging from plastic models of animals to computer programs and videotapes.
The groups also make available materials on the alternatives and on students' rights.
Numerous states, including New York, have laws or resolutions allowing primary- and secondary-school students with objections to dissection to complete an alternative project and not be penalized -- though not college students.
Numerous businesses have come in to meet the demand for alternatives.
Atlanta-based A.D.A.M. Software Inc. grew from a firm supplying medical diagram charts to the legal community into peddling interactive CD-ROMs and subscriptions to its Web sites of anatomy and physiology.
Such high-tech alternatives will eventually overshadow dissection, said company spokeswoman Ginny Perrine.
"These can never completely replace a view of the human body with a program," she said. "But you're getting a much better multi-media view."
Costs are prompting a decline in dissection, said the National Association of Biology Teachers' Carley. A single cat specimen can cost $30 or $35 and is usable by a student or two, while an alternative can be used repeatedly.
"In the minds of most teachers, the animal rights issue is a minimal one," he said.
Some important lessons in anatomy and biology don't translate over a computer screen, said Syracuse University biology department chairman John Russell. "Everybody learns differently, and I wouldn't deny there could be people who could learn to dance watching a CD-ROM. My guess is those would be few. You learn by reading, you learn by listening, you learn by doing."
And animals are valuable tools for teaching about humans, Carley said.
For more on the Extreme Frog campaign, click on: www.hsus.org/programs/research/big_frog.html.
For more on the National Association of Biology Teachers, click on: http://www.nabt.org/.