Ethical Issues Pertaining to Dissection

Recently, after completing a google search on, "Where do the animals for dissections come from?" some interesting points arose. I can not testify to the validity of them, but if they're true, they slightly alter my enthusiasm on conducting dissections at the high school level.

1. Does dissecting further a students education at the high school level? There are many people out there that do not think so. Many people think models are much clearer for the identification and wrote memorization of the organs of specimens. Go to this link

 ( http://www.animalearn.org/about.php) to access a search engine on the right hand side of the search page. After defining your criteria for a dissection substitution, an abundant amount of substitutions for preserved specimens will be displayed.

2. The following link, PETA's Take on dissection was disturbing. Even though it is a biased website, obviously designed be a PETA member, it makes some good points about the attitudes of students towards dissection. For example, In 1989, Larry Morris Brown of Wright State University polled ninth-grad students in Ohio for their opinions on dissection and discovered the following:
• 33% were bothered by dissection.
• 90% felt that they should be allowed to choose an alternative.
• 50% said that given the choice, they would choose an alternative.
• More than 80% said that teachers should encourage students to share their feelings about dissection and that animal rights should be a part of biology class.
In conducting the dissections in my classes, I actually saw about 20% of my students act the same way.

3. In addition to controversies about the ethics and utility of live animal dissection, many schools now also face financial pressures that make the cost of equipping classrooms and science labs with dissection kits and frog specimens prohibitive.

That’s where the popular phrase “There’s an app for that” comes in. The educational software maker Punflay provides one alternative to live animal dissections. Punflay has built dissection apps, available on iPad and desktop, which simulate the dissection process. Currently Punflay has two versions: frog and rat dissection. Click this Link to access the Link Site Punflay

Either way, whether you dissect or you do not, what needs to be taken into consideration are the ethical attitudes of students and parents alike. 

Some Students are Kinesthetically Intelligent

Here is a student that is very hard to motivate with a book or computer assignment. For him, the light switches on when he has the opportunity to get his hands dirty.

Owl pellet fully dissected!!!

Time to identify with the dichotomous key as a tool...

This is a real nice activity to establish predator- prey relationships in the Living Environment Ecology Unit!!!

Truly Motivated!

Here is a team of students identifying the organs of the frog

 

They really did a nice job!

 

Here is KA's Before....

 

And After Shots! Tidy it up KA.

 

 

 

Below is an extracted fetal pig...

 

 

Students were so pumped about this activity they wanted to

take the fetal pigs home with them!!! Some tried sneaking them out of

class in rubber gloves!

 

 

Dinner is served!

 

As previously stated there is no comparison from the virtual to the actual.

 

 

 

Owl Pellet Dissections

What makes this owl tick?

The owl pellet dissection is another dissection I do not find most of the Living Environment Dept. doing much more. In my opinion it is a excellent activity for high school freshmen. It develops a concrete connection between predator-prey relationships and reinforces the skills needed to use a dichotomous key for prey identification. 

For those that are squeamish about handling the egested parts of a rodent or bird, (prey) here is a link to a virtual owl pellet dissection and videos on the topic. 

1. It is the only site that pops up on a google search. Its ok, but it does not allow for much manipulation of photos.

http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/barnowl/index2.htm

There is a activity on this link that allows you to put the skeleton of a Red Squirrel back together. It is valuable because it helps students to identify the bones of the rodents they will encounter.

2. This is great video of an Eagle Owl stalking its prey. Just cut and paste the link below into your address bar or click the link!

http://www.dogwork.com/owfo8#.UYaqo_oYy80.gmailEagle Owl Approach

3. This video shows how owl pellets are collected. It is from the show, "Dirty Jobs".

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-owl-vomit-collector.html

Hopefully your students will embrace the owl pellet lab to make ecology real for them. If not the above should get the point across for them.

Continuation of virtual dissections

The easiest way to use the frog guts dissection simulation was by doing a google search on Frog Dissection Games. Through this search I came up with a website called http://www.roketoyun.com/frog-dissection.asp and it allows you to virtually use tools to cut open a frog and identify 5 or six organs. in my opinion, pretty lame.

The students don't get a feel for the pressure they need to apply to the instruments, nor can they feel how hard or soft they need to use an instrument like a scalpel to cut away the organs in order to identify those underneath.

What sort of generation of people are we raising that students get there memorable experiences through virtual reality. After reviewing some of the free online simulations I say, "Let the squemish sit out the activities that require actual human presence!" Do the virtual stuff for home work!

Real!

Fake!!! See the difference.

Virtual Dissections

In response to student distaste for actual dissections, I'd like to post some links to virtual dissections.

Many of the students became ill and carried on as if I were asking them to cut up up live human beings. These students were sent to the library to complete Amphibian chapter questions from the text. needless to say, this activity was not interactive.

Here is a review of several websites that allow students to see how to dissect a  frog for comparative anatomy purposes.
Virtual Frog Dissection

www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL.../BL_16.html 

This website uses computer generated, 3-D images to demonstrate the dissection procedure and location of organs once the abdominal muscles are penetrated. What is really nice about this website is that the student may play video segments that go through the dissection step by step.

http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/frog_alternative.html

The above link is a nice alternative lesson using the Virtual Frog Dissection above. There are nice slide shows with labels on completing a frog dissection. 

 Many of the online dissection websites I visited were just plain lame. For example, froguts.com is impossible to navigate. No matter what clicked on, I was lead to dead end pages. I did however reach pages that were advertisements for software that will probably become obsolete tomorrow.

High School Biology Dissections

Today was a fun day of teaching. My students dissected pig uteri as the culmination of the sexual reproduction unit. They had a great time whether they thought it was awesome or gross. Students were able to identify the umbilical cord, placenta, and amniotic sac. I even let them take photos of their dissections to post on facebook later on their own time. So, even though its a memorable experience for high school freshmen, do they actually further their knowledge of the female reproductive system by pretending to be pig Obstetricians, or is it an activity to stall in anticipation of a new week when we can start fresh on a new topic?

I started asking as myself this question as I passed from lab station to lab station. I realized students were having fun dismantling their specimens, but I did not get the feeling that they were progressing in their knowledge of what it means to be pregnant. The purpose of the activity is to handle the female pig anatomy in order to make the connection between structure and function. I got the feeling that it was something fun for them because it had nothing to do with regents practice.

Prior to this lab activity we fully discussed the structures and hormones involved in pregnancy. Yesterday they took an exam on reproduction and actually did poorly overall. But, I do not think their grades overall would have improved if we completed the dissection lab before the exam. For example, I extracted one of the fetal pig lungs from one of the fetal pigs extracted by a lab team and asked around the class, "If I submerged this lung in water, would you expect it to float or sink?" Most of the students responded with blank stares, but a few reasoned that they would expect it to float because they're used for breathing and contain air. Not one student could make the connection on their own that the fetuses got all the oxygen they needed through the placenta and therefore, the lungs never contained air.

Many of the older teachers in the department have abandoned dissections all together, a practice I don't agree with. But, in this age of APPR, is it better to have fun and create an experience a student can look back on fondly, or is it better to look good in the eyes of the district by drilling students with regents practice so they become good test takers? It's a catch 22.

The more I think about it, the more I hate final exams.