How to Understand Vivisection

Vivisection is the process of experimentation on living organisms or the dissection of an animal body. While the term literally refers to the dissection of a live animal, today this is a very rare occurrence. With its ethical questions and scientific advantages, vivisection is a controversial subject so follow these steps to understand the process and issues.

Instructions

1. Understand the goals of vivisection. In countries with advanced science programs, such as the US and the UK, vivisection is used to develop treatments for humans. In almost no case is vivisection used to simply "explore" or, as some anti-vivisection activists claim, to torture animals. In most cases, however, there is a financial motivation involved in research that involves vivisection.

2. Know what animals are used. Gruesome imagery from movies and anti-vivisection organizations shows monkeys and cows undergoing horrible experiments. The truth is that only a tiny percentage (less than one percent) of all vivisections involve primates or large mammals. The vast majority of vivisection is carried out on animals such as mice, rats and certain birds.

3. Learn about the controls on vivisection. In the US, vivisection is under extremely tight control by ethics boards and the government. For an institute to receive permission to do vivisection it must undergo regular inspection by an ethics board. The types of experiments are also tightly controlled, often nixing valuable but iffy experiments when they cross ethical lines.

4. Find out about the anti-vivisection argument. Some former vivisectionists make strong arguments against the practice. It's important to understand these anti-vivisection arguments. One strong argument against the practice is that animals are so different from humans in terms of treatments and response to experimentation that vivisection is a waste of time at best and an unnecessary cruelty at worst.