Thank you! These answers have really helped with my anxiety on the subject.

@Rachel-S Nonono, I understand the current dissection process is horrible and brutal. I don’t believe that every single person needs to dissect an animal, and these animals should not be killed for the sake of dissection. What my point is, as a vet you do need to learn how to use a scalpel on flesh, but there are so few vets in training that there has to be a better way to do it by using naturally dead animals like a med student would use a dead corpse. No one would actually kill a human.

Well I’m not too sure on this issue but if they kill an animal just to use to dissect for people who are training to be a vet, wouldn’t that be just wrong. Couldn’t they still use fake things like I’m sure some doctors use in training students. Some of the fake dead animals have the same things a real one so I don’t see killing a cat just so someone can learn…. I don’t know, but I’m sure you will get a better answer from PETA.

Also there’s so many less vet students than there are normal high school students in the U.S. If every person needed an animal to dissect, the death toll would be huge. If only vet and med students needed them, there may be enough animals who have to get euthanized because of health reasons anyway, so it would be using the animals after they’re dead. I’m not sure exactly how the numbers stack up, but there has to be some way to do that. Any thoughts, anyone? I’m just thinking of my dog. He died recently and we chose to have his ashes delivered, but maybe if there was someway you could “donate” a pet’s body to science and then retrieve his or her ashes? Is that ethical or no?

As a veterinarian you will have to cut open animals one time in your life or another. While animals are killed for dissection you may have to be a vet. You do the wrong thing for the right reason in a way. In most cases I am against dissecting because it is an unnecessary cruelty. However, this being the case you are in effort to do a good. It is ethical in a utilitarian view, but not a Kantian view.

I’ve just always wondered, I’ve always refused to dissect but I do want to go to college to be a veterinarian so I can help animals. At some point in veterinarian school, I’m going to have to dissect for the greater good of animals. If I’m pursuing this career to help animals over all, is it still wrong to dissect? It’s not like I want to dissect, I just know that I’m going to have to to be able to complete vet school and eventually help animals medically.