PETA launches campaign over rats and frogs in UC Irvine class

Think the days of freaking out over animal dissection are over? Think again. The Orange County Register reports on some goings-on at UC Irvine:

IRVINE -– Animal-rights activists have launched an e-mail campaign aimed at UCI, where they say biology students are forced to pour poison into live rats' brains and cut up living frogs for study.

One day after launching the national campaign, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says 2,000 e-mails have already been sent to University of California, Irvine asking the campus to switch to a computer simulation.

PETA spokesman Justin Goodman said his group contacted UCI after a student complained in July that she was ordered to poison a rat in her biology class, or flunk the lesson.

"According to the student whistleblower, students drill into the heads of healthy rats and drop in poison to damage their brains, and then they staple that the rats' heads closed," a PETA statement reads. "After two weeks, the students poke the rats with blunt sticks in a crude attempt to gauge the brain damage the rats have suffered."

But James Hicks, who heads an oversight committee at UCI, said PETA was not accurately describing how the animals were being treated, and wrongly using inflammatory words like "whistleblower" to portray classroom instruction that had been properly reviewed and approved by campus officials.

Comments

[Darcy Ramsey]

PETA is right. Students shouldn't be cutting into animals, period. Dissection is a great way to teach violence and disrespect for animals - bad for animals, bad science. From what I've read about computer simulation, it's more advanced, more educational and far kinder. Get with the program, UC Irvine, you're better than this.

[Brien Comerford]

The reality of rats and frogs being tortured and killed for "experimental purposes" is criminal animal abuse warranting a felony.

[Scott Nass]

As a medical student set to graduate in June with an M.D., I am proud to say that I have gotten to this point in my life having never dissected a single animal throughout my post-secondary education. I successfully worked with professors at the undergraduate and professional school level to utilize available alternatives to "killed-animal" dissection, and my medical school long ago made the transition to computer simulations rather than continue the horrible "dog labs" that some schools still use to demonstrate the effects that drugs have on living dogs (i.e., eventual death). Simulations provide an equal if not better educational experience, allowing for repeated practice by each student, as well as individual sessions rather than sharing a frog, pig, cat, etc. Additionally, they are more economical and create less waste. UCI administrators should be thanking PETA for proposing changes that would bring student education into the present, rather than fight to maintain an archaic status quo.