The Virtue of Virtual: Schools Switch to Digital Dissection

So far, nine schools in California and Maine have agreed to end animal dissections in response to a challenge issued by AWI, Save the Frogs! and Digital Frog International. In exchange for their signed agreement to stop all animal dissections for a five-year period, the schools receive a free license for the Digital Frog 2.5 virtual dissection software (valued at $884) manufactured by Digital Frog International. Each year, over 12 million frogs, cats, fetal pigs, rats, dogs, pigeons, turtles and other animals are used in school dissection projects. The procurement process is often extremely brutal, with callous treatment during the capture, transport, warehousing and killing, including death by immersion in preservative for many frogs. Animal dissections desensitize students to animal cruelty and the unnecessary taking of animal lives. Virtual dissection is not only more compassionate, it is less expensive than procuring live and dead animals to dissect. It is also more effective: According to TeachKind, a web resource for humane education materials, “In nearly every comparative study ever published, students using nonanimal methods such as interactive computer simulations tested as well as or better than their peers who were taught using animals for dissection and other animal-based exercises.”

Schools can make the pledge to end dissections by visiting the AWI Humane Education page.

See more AWI Quarterly articles about: Animals in Laboratories

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