Lawmaker files bill allowing students an alternative to animal dissections

 

 

(NETWORK INDIANA)  One Indiana lawmaker wants to create options for students who just don’t want do to wield scalpels in the classroom for animal dissections.

You know the traditional tools of animal dissection with the microscope and that scalpel. Well, State Rep. Ragen Hatcher wants schoolkids to be able to go digital.

An IUPUI biology lecturer knows the ins and outs of animal dissection. “We’ve done cats, we’ve done fetal pigs, we’ve done frogs,” said Robert Yost, the senior lecturer of biology at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. “We’ve done earthworms, we’ve done sea stars.”

He’s taught and led students in the inner workings since 1993.

“It really gives them an opportunity to see what the true inside workings of an animal really look like and how they’re related,” Yost said.

Yost said virtual dissections work, but added, “I think it’s much more beneficial for students to have a hands-on experience and really be able to see, because internally, there are just normal anatomical differences in the way structures are put together or how they’re oriented within the body, that you don’t get on the virtual.”

Rep. Hatcher, a Democrat from Gary, said, “All those animals that are killed every year to be used in the schools. Some schools use pigs even.”

Which is Hatcher filed her “alternatives to animal dissection” bill.

“I’m sure there are other opportunities for students to be able to learn about dissection, technologically, without necessarily cutting open a frog itself,” Hatcher said.

Her bill suggests films, pictures, models, live observation in the wild or a zoo, or via computer.

Hatcher is not sure if her bill will get a hearing. She should know in the coming days.