When 100 percent of U.S. medical schools don’t use animal dissection, it’s safe to assume that cutting open animals isn’t necessary to become a brilliant doctor. In fact, studies show that being forced to participate in animal dissection can actually scare students away from pursuing a career in science-related fields!
So if dissection isn’t actually teaching you anything, what does it do to you? Here’s a shocker: Studies suggest that cutting up dead cats, rats, frogs, and pigs in classrooms can foster callousness toward animals and nature.
Here are 15 photos posted on Instagram (and for some, the captions that were posted with them) to prove that dissection is pointless.
Warning: These photos are graphic and upsetting. We’ve protected the identities of the people involved—we all were guilty of using animals in one way or another before we knew better. Now we’re calling on YOU to help keep corpses out of classrooms.
Caption: “Chopping up eyes on a Monday morning as per usual.”
A student looked at a cow fetus and used this hashtag: “#yum”?! How about no.
Caption: “The phrase: ‘#Eating your #heart out just became a lot more #real.'”
When a student uses the hashtag #blowjob on a mutilated corpse, you know that animal dissection teaches only callousness and a disregard for life.
In his caption, he chose this hashtag: “#jealous.” Just no.
“#scienceporn”?!
Caption: “Sorry cat”
Don’t be sorry—say NO to dissection! It doesn’t have to be this way.
Caption: “My inner sociopath coming out”
This plastic-wrapped cat in your dissection tray might have once been someone’s companion animal: This frog was probably captured from his home in the wild, tossed into a bag, and killed so that he could wind up in your classroom: This baby pig was probably cut out of her mom’s womb at a slaughterhouse and killed before taking even one breath:
Caption: “World Meet Bacon.”
Dissection strips animals of their lives and dignity.
If these photos make you sick, I feel you—dissection day at my high school sent me into panic mode. My textbook was telling me to apply pressure to the knife and cut a 6-inch lateral incision down the length of a black cat’s abdomen. My gut told me this was wrong. Where did the cat come from? How did she get here? How did she die?
Listen to your gut. Choose a humane alternative to dissection.