Disecting, yes/no

[A Little Bit of Warmth]

We're disecting baby pigs in my anatomy(sp) class, and the whole thought of cutting open a baby pig has unnerved me. I know that my teacher said the greatest respect we can give the baby pigs is by learning everything we can from them. Despite that, I still feel it's completely wrong to kill a baby pig just so we can disect it. I even tried doing just a little bit, thinking that maybe if I did some work on it, it wouldn't bother me as much. Boy, I was wrong. Doing that made it that much worse for me. And today we had to cut open the thoracic area so we could see its digestive tract. I was actually shaking from seeing him demonstrate what cuts he wanted us to do.

So do you think it's right to disect them and/or to kill them for such a purpose?

By the way, these are newborns. They still have the umbilical cords attached to them.  

[Starlock]

I think that using critters for dissection for educational purposes is an awful lot less objectionable than other things we do to them. One thing you can ask is this: would you be willing to cut up a human infant/cadaver to learn the same thing? If not, then perhaps shouldn't be complaining. There's really no substitute for learning anatomy from live dissections and they can't exactly afford to give cadavers to non-medical students. I learned a tremendous amount from the lab dissection I did as an undergraduate and although I'm sure the creature wasn't treated with respect during its life, *I* honored its sacrifice and gave it meaning.  

[EstellaHanzatsu]

I had to do that too!
but i didn't.
I refused.
I just don't believe in cutting open animals.
my teacher tried to argue that it donated itself to science but he sort of snuck in "against his will" at the end.
the piggie i was supposed to discect was still fetal.
i stood behind one of the guys that was actually doing the work and made baby pig noises. . . it made him feel bad plus his stomach was already beginning to be all icky.