Pharyngula::Good for Doug Bjerregaard!

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Saturday, May 14, 2005

Good for Doug Bjerregaard!

PZ Myers • 86 Comments (last page)

Here's a story that might polarize a few readers: Class Dissection Of Live Dog Outrages Parents, Students. With a few caveats, though, I thoroughly endorse the teacher's actions.

A biology class lesson in Gunnison, Utah involving the dissection of a live dog has outraged some parents and students, according to a report.

Biology teacher Doug Bjerregaard, who is a substitute teacher at Gunnison Valley High School, wanted his students to see how the digestive system of a dog worked.

Bjerregaard made arrangements for his students to be a part of a dissection of a dog that was still alive.

The dog was still alive, but the teacher said it was sedated before the dissection began.

With the students watching, the sedated dog's digestive system was removed.

"It just makes me sick and I don't think this should go on anywhere and nobody's learning from it," student Sierra Sears said.

The teacher said the lesson would allow students to see the organs actually working.

"I thought that it would be just really a good experience if they could see the digestive system in the living animal," Bierregaard said.

The school's principal, Kirk Anderson, said notifications went to parents explaining the dog was going to be euthanized and that the experiment would be done with the dog's organs still functioning.

The teacher is standing by his decision and calls it the ultimate educational experience.

Principal Anderson said he supports the lesson and it will be allowed to continue because the students are learning.

The dog used in the experiment was going to be euthanized despite the class project.

I remember well the first time I opened up the abdomen of an anesthetized mammal—it was beautiful. Guts are muscular and equipped with their own simple nervous system, and they writhe and slither about like a giant coiled worm. There's also a huge difference between fresh, live biology and fixed and prepared specimens. I think it's excellent that a teacher was going beyond the minimal requirements of a biology class to witness something so vital, and I'm also happy to see the school administration supporting good biology education. I should add, though, that I've found that schools in farm communities are often completely untroubled by anti-vivisectionist sentiment, while they do tend to have even more serious problems with the religious anti-evolution brigade.

My only reservations: the student quoted above is partially right. Some students won't learn anything from it, including Ms Sears, and it really ought to be an optional opportunity for the best students in the class. This also should only be done after consultation with a qualified veterinarian to be sure that anesthesia is adequate; a good educational experience is not worth making an animal suffer.

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Comments:

#24936: Orac — 05/14 at 04:13 PM
Hello. The surgeon has to chime in here.

The dog was just "sedated"? That's inadequate for such a procedure in the abdomen. Sedation is not the same thing analgesia, and both analgesia and sedation are what is needed for surgery, particularly abdominal surgery. Unless the dog was thoroughly anesthetized and intubated on a ventilator, so that adequate anesthesia (preferably in the form of lots of opiates and/or inhalational agents) could be given, there is no way to be sure that the dog didn't feel considerable pain during this procedure before dying. You can be completely sedated to the point of not reacting much to pain and still feel every bit of it. When we did the dog lab in medical school, the dogs were completely anesethetized, intubated, and on the ventilator.

Unless you can tell me more information that indicates that the dog was anaesthetized adequately (which would probably require an experienced veterinarian or veterinarian technician trained in animal anaesthesia to be present, as well as proper anaesthesia equipment), I cannot condone or excuse what this teacher did, and I think you are probably making a mistake defending him.

--
Orac “A statement of fact cannot be insolent.”
http://oracknows.blogspot.com

#24938: PZ Myers — 05/14 at 04:31 PM
The news article is very vaguely written, so I have no idea about the details of the experiment, and I should add that if all they did was whip out some ropy entrails and go "ooh, cool", that's not a very good reason to do the experiment.

But your point is also the point of my last caveat: they had better have had the procedure reviewed by a vet.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#24939: — 05/14 at 04:45 PM
Well, personally, I would be completely disgusted...

but that's just because I'm a whuss. If the dog doesn't suffer and is going to be euthanized anyhow, I don't see why not.

#24940: charlie wagner — 05/14 at 04:48 PM
Speaking as a teacher of science for 33 years I can tell you that this is one of the worst cases of poor judgement that I have ever encountered. He's lucky he wasn't fired. This is inexcusable in a High School or Middle school setting. And Orac is 100% correct.

#24941: rob loftis — 05/14 at 05:06 PM
I see little guarantee that the animal will not suffer. Vets, especially from the older generation, are often sloppy with varieties of animal analgesics, rarely distinguishing between anesthesia and paralytic agents, lumping them all together under the category "chemical restraint."

See Bernie Rollin's work for more information on this. Valarie Hardcastle's *The Myth of Pain* draws a connection between callous treatments of animal pain and callous treatments of pain in newborns.

Lest I completely alienate my host, I will say that this is one of the more minor wrongs inflicted on animals in our culture. For starters, it actually serves a noble purpose: science education. The suffering of food animals, by contrast is completely gratuitous.

In general, much animal experimentation can be justified, whereas carnivorism is simply cruel. Anti-animal experimentation activism gets more attention vegetarian activism because people only care about animal suffering when they can pin the blame on someone different than them, a scientist, someone rich enough to wear fur.

#24943: Mark — 05/14 at 05:41 PM
Since carnivorism is simply cruel, I suppose it's a good thing that a carnivore was put down.

#24944: Rana — 05/14 at 05:48 PM
My problem with this is that there doesn't seem to have been an option for students to "opt out" of the class, and that the instructor seems disturbingly cavalier about the experiment.

I opted out from a frog dissection when I was in 3rd grade (I tried to stay for the first few minutes and quickly discovered I couldn't handle it), and didn't take advanced biology in high school because I knew that cat dissection was part of the curriculum. And I was a kid who found cow eyeballs and heart dissection fascinating and wasn't queasy at all in similar partial dissections. I have also seen chickens killed for dinner, and killed fish myself for similar reasons. So I'm not anti-dissection, nor against killing for a purpose.

That said, I would be horrified if I came into class one day to discover that I was going to see a live animal cut into pieces, no matter how humanely it was done, with no warning beforehand. I would also be very worried about my classmates' reactions; if there was any joking or giggling, I would be out of there immediately, if I hadn't left already.

It's too serious an activity to do on a whim and without preparing _willing_ and _informed_ students to participate in a serious and appropriate manner. A live being died for this experiment; the least one can do is ensure that it is done as painlessly and as respectfully as possible -- and I don't feel confident in this case that it was.

#24945: — 05/14 at 05:51 PM
Well, I can see some use for death row prisoners now. After anaesthetisation, but before the actual lethal injection, they can be sent off to medical schools and high school biology classes for vivisection. It'll be okay because they'll be anaesthetised, and, hey, they were going to die anyway.

Yeah, hyperbole, but I can't look on the vivisection of a sentient creature with equanimity, no matter how educational or beautiful it is. I have to side with the parents on this one.

#24947: Matt Brauer — 05/14 at 05:55 PM
While I agree that a very good educational experience might have come from this demonstation, I still have to ask: "what the hell was he thinking??!!" You have to be a little bit dense to not realize that this would not go over well.

Also: he's a substitute teacher. What did he do: waltz into a biology class and start the dissection? I would think that it would take most of a semester to prepare students for this experience, and I'd want to work very hard to lead up to it in a manner that maximized the educational value and minimized the trivialization of another creature's life.

As a point for comparison: I TA'd a sophomore lab for bio majors in which we dosed mice with insulin and monitored their blood chemistry. Even THAT didn't go over well with many of the students. A dog vivisection in a high school class just seems foolish.

#24950: Nick Matzke — 05/14 at 07:21 PM
For high school general biology that is way over the top. There might be some purpose to this for medical students or training for very specific science or very specific scientific research questions, but not for general biology. Dissect a nice dead frog if you want to do some basic anatomy.

It's not exactly true that dogs are people too, but it is a lot closer to the truth than treating a living dog like a dead frog. It is not mere sentimentality to take into consideration the close emotional connection that people have with their pets. Various psychotic killers started out with cruelty to animals and then built up their ability to depersonalize their victims until they reached humans.

Obviously this worst-case scenario is a rare thing, but vivisection of living sociable mammals should at the very least be restricted to professional settings, with people who have the training/reason/maturity/veternary skills to do it with understanding, ethically, and for the significant betterment of medicine.

Even euthanizing the dog first would have been much preferable.

That's my 2 cents. Then again, I'm a dog person, and I think cats and cat people are all soul-less aliens.

#24951: — 05/14 at 07:27 PM
I tend to agree with the strategy that this could have been useful in a different setting. AP class or Science Club with an option to opt out. And I think the veterinarian should have done the surgery.

Matt, Substitutes dont necessarily only work by the day. I was once a substitute middle school biology teacher for most of a semester due the departure of the regular teacher. 'Substitutes' are sometimes used like 'instructors', as semi permanent cheap labor, especially in subjects where good certificated people are hard to find. Science, Math (I did that for a full school year) and Special Ed are where this happens most often. After 10 years in finance I make a pretty fair basic Algebra teacher, but I must admit that I have long way to go to be an accomplished Biology teacher, even to 7th graders.

#24954: — 05/14 at 07:37 PM
Was this dog going to be euthanized due to illness?

Or was the dog simply a stray?

#24958: — 05/14 at 07:49 PM
So, anybody (but especially orac), what about shooting live pigs to give Army surgeons experience before working on battlefield casualties?

That didn't go down, and as I recall, it was being done in Utah before public opinion put a stop to it.

I'll answer my own question -- I'd shoot the pig -- but I'm curious how other people would slot pigs in with this dog story.

#24959: hilzoy — 05/14 at 08:10 PM
PZ: I have to disagree with you. There is, as other people have pointed out, no guarantee that the dog didn't suffer. And while there's an actual point to research on animals, there's much less of one when it comes to high school biology classes, where there are lots of other ways of teaching kids what they need to learn.

One biologist who ended up working on the ethics of animal research got into it (so she says) because she was asked to judge a science fair, and one of the kids had done an experiment on the effects of smoke on -- I think -- hamsters, which involved halfway suffocating the hamsters, and then dissecting them to see what had happened. She was not at all opposed to animal research per se, but found the idea of doing this to any animal as part of a junior high school science fair appalling. I agree with her, and I think that doing this to a dog is similar.

#24960: — 05/14 at 08:16 PM
Harry,

Since pigs are raised and shot to make sausage, detouring for medical training does not strike me as inappropriate. But I wouldnt do it to teach kids first aid.

#24962: Matt Brauer — 05/14 at 08:19 PM
No disrespect meant to heroic and underpaid substitute teachers. Especially those that take some initiative and come up with ambitious ways to stimulate interest in biology.

I hope that you're right and that Doug Bjerregaard had the opportunity to develop trustful relationships with the students before even thinking of doing this vivisection.

#24967: CJ — 05/14 at 08:49 PM
I concur that this would have been best for an AP class and that an 'opt out' possiblity should have been available. In addition, I think the lesson should have included information about responsible pet ownership and statistics on how many animals are euthanized in the U. S. each year as a result of the irresponsible behavior of humans.

#24970: — 05/14 at 08:51 PM
Matt, No offense was taken .... and I think the guy was misguided.

The Principal approved the plan though, and maybe local standards are such that most parents and students were unfazed by the whole thing, but it sounds very risky to me.

#24971: Dan S. — 05/14 at 08:54 PM
The choice of a dog, while possibly quite practical, shows extremely poor judgement. As pointed out, it's a pet animal.

This is a vague article. Maybe the animal was being dissected as part of some other thing? It sounds a little like that, but hard to tell. . .

Every hs dissection lab I sat through involved kids hacking at animal corpses. Some may have appreciated the intricate nature of real anatomy, but most . . . no.

#24972: — 05/14 at 09:01 PM
I missed something here. I occasionally read something called http://slashdot.org/ for the daily news of technology tidbits. Somehow I managed to miss the anti evolution underbelly. There are a wide variety of posters there so one takes everything with a grain of salt.

Can someone explain?

#24976: Christine — 05/14 at 09:47 PM
Wow. I plan to major in Biology and eventually teach high school Biology. And I was worried about the Frog...

#24977: mattH — 05/14 at 10:09 PM
A couple of links. Odds are they'll both go dead sooner than later.

Bjerregaard was a teacher in that district for 30 years and subs regularly. He'd been in the class for the whole week. Of nine students, eight got verbal parental permission, with the other student doing other work that day.

The dog, a Rottweiler, had been scheduled to be euthanized by a vet because it was no longer wanted. The district Superintendent claims the original owners had noticed the dog exhibiting agressive behaviors towards children, turned it over to the vet, and he hadn't been able to find another owner.

Perhaps a bit overblown, but it's still possible that it wasn't clear to the parents what was going on.

#24979: — 05/14 at 10:27 PM
This is not necessary for this level of student. Perhaps an advanced level biology or Vet Med student. These are children and dogs are pets -there is no reason to upset them with the death of this dog in there presence , even if this dog would die regardless.

George

#24981: — 05/14 at 11:15 PM
I feel rather sad because I have lost respect for the author of this blog...

#24982: Jim Anderson — 05/14 at 11:16 PM
Somehow this will end up as an urban legend involving bathtubs full of ice.

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Saturday, May 14, 2005

Good for Doug Bjerregaard!

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