If you have ever had a pet, the mere thought of the pet being harmed in any way is unbearable. Let’s say that you don’t have a pet, when the ASPCA commercial comes on television, do you watch the faces of the animals that have been abused and put to death? Doesn’t it break your heart to see what is done to those innocent animals that simply do not have a place to live anymore? While many people may say that they are against animal cruelty, doesn’t dissecting animals during Anatomy and Biology classes count as animal cruelty?

When deciding whether or not to take Anatomy this year, the fact that we had to dissect animals played a large role in my decision. While I still chose to take the class because I am interested in
learning the anatomy of humans and animals, the thought of having to dissect a cat made me very uneasy. In my class, we have started dissecting the cats. The first day my stomach was in knots while getting ready to be assigned our own cat that I knew would have to be viciously cut open. That day was the hardest. When observing the cat for the first time, you could see the pain in its eyes
and in the way its body was positioned.  Knowing that these cats were put to sleep for no medical reason except for an abundance of animals in a pound is heartless. Seeing the pain in the animal’s eyes is not worth the experience of dissecting a cat for a grade.

An article published by PETA on http://www.peta.org stated, “Students don’t need to cut up animals to understand basic anatomy and physiology. Those who plan to go into a medical field would do better to study humans in a controlled and supervised setting, examine human cadavers, or use any of the many non-animal learning methods available, such as those provided by computer models and sophisticated simulators.” This is completely true, while having a hands on experience of dissecting a cat is something completely different from an online simulation; it is much more humane to do so. Simulations are so advanced today that they give students the same amount of information as an actual dissection.