Pop the corks on those champagne bottles test tubes! After more than five years of discussions among PETA, the Intel Corporation, and the Society for Science & the Public (SSP) concerning cruel and deadly experiments on animals conducted by high school students participating in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair [http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/] (ISEF), the world's largest pre-collegiate science competition, the event has implemented a new policy banning experiments in which any animals die or are intentionally killed.

This is great news since it's estimated that in 2011 alone, thousands of vertebrate animals likely died in experiments conducted by students who were competing in regional science fairs around the world in the hope of making it to the ISEF finals. Seven million high school students participate in these fairs each year.  

Groundwork Leads to Groundbreaking Victory

For years, high school students competing in ISEF-affiliated science fairs around the world have conducted and participated in invasive and deadly experiments on animals, such as addicting animals to cocaine, inflicting brain injuries on them, injecting them with toxic chemicals, and inducing strokes in animals and then cutting them open. To stop these cruel experiments, PETA has been working with Intel and SSP since 2007 with considerable success. Prior to the new ban on deadly experiments, SSP (which organizes ISEF)—after discussions with PETA and Intel (which sponsors ISEF)—adopted a formal statement in 2010 in favor of modern alternatives to animal experiments. 

How to Help Animals in School Laboratories

Psyched about this victory? Use the buttons below to "like" it, tweet about it, and otherwise spread the word. And if you want to cut dissection and other lab-based cruelty out of your school's curriculum, get all the details at peta2.com.

Exciting news from our pals at PETA India! Following that group's extensive campaign, the Indian government has issued guidelines to the Medical Council of India, the Pharmacy Council of India, and the University Grants Commission instructing them to completely stop dissection and experimentation on animals to train both undergraduate and postgraduate students and use non-animal methods of teaching instead.

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Going All Out for All Animals in Laboratories

This campaign was hard-fought. In addition to writing letters to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (which issued the guidelines) and the entities mentioned above, efforts included gathering petition signatures from university students, letters from and meetings held by progressive scientists, and work by other caring individuals as well as online outreach, celebrity involvement, media pressure, and demonstrations. And of course, the PETA Foundation's administrative, fundraising, and finance departments helped keep the campaign afloat.

Another key to this victory was a recent brainstorming session among government scientists and other researchers in which PETA India participated, making the point that animals are not required in order to train students. Indeed, as the ministry said in issuing the guidelines, "Nowadays effective alternatives in the form of CDs, computer simulations, manikin/models, in vitro methods, etc are available and they are not only effective and absolute replacements to the use of animals in teaching anatomy/physiology but they are also superior pedagogic tools in the teaching of pharmacy/life sciences."

How You Can Help Animals in University Laboratories

Countless animals continue to suffer and die in laboratories at U.S. colleges and universities—please take action to persuade the U.S. to follow India's compassionate and forward-thinking example.

Bubbles, one of the resident cats at PETA's Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters, has written a letter to Santa (with a little help from the author of 250 Things You Can Do to Make Your Cat Adore You):

'Tis the season of peace and goodwill, and students and teachers across the country are extending both to animals who would have been killed and dissected for crude biology lessons.

All too often, PETA receives complaints from compassionate middle school, high school, and college students who are faced with the daunting dilemma of whether to mutilate a dead frog, rat, or cat or receive a failing grade for standing up for animals. When we hear from these students, we quickly spring into action and contact faculty and administrators to urge them to respect the students' wishes by providing them with modern non-animal learning methods and asking them to cut out dissection altogether. 

Photo: Robert Sebree; Makeup: Chantal Moore for The Cloutier Agency

One of the ways in which PETA facilitates schools' transition to humane science teaching tools is through our TeachKind educational grant program. Teachers can apply to receive free computers, software, and models to replace animal dissection in their classrooms. Not only do these modern and effective teaching tools save animals' lives, they also help create a positive learning environment that does not exclude students because of their moral beliefs.

The following are just a few of PETA's recent successes for students and animals:

• After a high school student in Washington complained to PETA that the school was requiring students to dissect cats, we convinced school officials to drop dissection and use humane alternatives instead.
• A middle school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee, wanted to replace animals with a virtual dissection laboratory. PETA is making this dream a reality by donating the appropriate software to the school.
• PETA also donated software for a virtual dissection lab at a grade school in Woodlawn, Illinois, and to a middle school in Frankenmuth, Michigan, that wanted to replace frog and earthworm dissections.
• An elementary school student in Indiana contacted PETA when her teacher instructed students to capture insects, freeze them to death, and pin them to boards. Working with school officials, we got the cruel assignment nixed.

To learn how to get modern non-animal science teaching tools for your school or to help fund these lifesaving donations, visit TeachKind.org.

Call it life imitating art. Fans who caught the latest episode of HBO's Enlightened on Monday got a little more enlightened when PETA's message popped up on the show. Executive producer, star, and PETA friend Mike White stuck it to cruelty when he stuck PETA stickers on the desk of character Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern). Here's what the stickers, which were clearly visible throughout the scene, read:

In need of some illumination of your own? Read more about the leather industry and dissection on PETA's website, and see the stickers' appearance in the new episode of Enlightened on HBO Go.

It's that time of year when all you want to do is find the perfect comfy chair (or vegetable aisle) to hibernate in, but why not curl up with some steamy Internet Soup instead?

• My Nana always said, "No tushies on the table."
• At least this roadkill-craving mother-to-be isn't in denial about the fact that meat is rotting flesh.
• Toys, art, and science collide in one of the coolest alternatives to the use of animals in dissection that we've ever seen. Next up: a Lego fetal pig?
• It's hard out there for vivisectors, what with public sculptures shaming them and all.
• PETA-approved animal heads? Go wild!

sailorbill | cc by 2.0

Following an extensive campaign by PETA India, Indian universities' top governing body, the University Grants Commission (UGC), is officially recommending that all colleges and universities replace animal dissection and animal experimentation in zoology and life sciences courses with modern non-animal methods. According to Dr BK Sharma, associate professor and head of the Department of Zoology at the RL Saharia Government PG College in Jaipur, by using computer simulations, interactive CD-ROMs, films, charts, and lifelike models, it is estimated that Indian universities will save 19 million animals every year.

Animals used for dissection may be captured from their natural habitats or may come from "biological supply" companies, which not only breed animals but also purchase them from slaughterhouses, pet stores, animal shelters, and dealers who sell lost or stolen companion animals. Animals are killed by gassing or drowning and are then injected with formaldehyde, sometimes without first being checked to make sure that they are dead. 

The UGC's recommendations will not only spare millions of animals' lives but also ensure that students don't have to choose between their education and their morals.

Visit CutOutDissection.com to learn how PETA can help you get dissection alternatives implemented in schools near you.

Get ready to practice your high-fives and Bronx cheers—here's our quasi-monthly round-up of animal friends and foes:

• Kisses to California for making the water safer for sharks. The state banned the sale, trade, or possession of shark fins, which are cut off live sharks who are then thrown back into the water to sink to the ocean floor and die. An extra smooch goes to the Toronto City Council for voting to ban shark fins in that city.
• Fish foe Alex Andon makes our hiss list for developing the Desktop Jellyfish Tank, in which up to five jellyfish can be imprisoned. To help understand what's wrong with this, take a look at the online documentary Jellyfish Lake.
• A kiss to the New York state government for passing a dissection choice law that lets students choose not to cut up frogs and other animals and instead opt for state-of-the-art-computer programs that leave animals in peace.   
• Rihanna has crawled her way onto the year's worst-dressed list, first for her penchant for fur—and now for ostrich feathers, which are cruelly torn off live birds or birds who have been sent to slaughter.
• Kisses to the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation for adopting dogs from shelters to be trained as disaster search dogs. The dogs are paired with a human rescuer who provides them with a real home and affection.
• And finally, a kiss for truth in advertising to Dex Media Inc. When the company listed Bozeman and Belgrade, Montana's Bar 3 Bar-B-Q restaurants in its yellow-pages directory under "Animal Carcass Removal," it certainly had the restaurant's number!

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Update: The Collier County School District has officially agreed with PETA and the family of the harassed student, saying that Mary Ellen Alexander "acted insensitively and inappropriately." The school board reassigned her to another school, is requiring her to be retrained, and has placed a disciplinary letter in her district and state files.

The district is also considering replacing animal dissection with modern, humane alternatives, which PETA has offered to supply. 

The following was originally posted on February 22, 2011.

School bullying usually involves a student making another student miserable. But in a new twist, a Florida teacher reportedly bullied and taunted a student simply for exercising her legal right to choose not to dissect a frog. Now the Florida State Board of Education, prompted by PETA's call for the termination of the teacher, has opened an investigation.

dan zen/cc by 2.0

According to the seventh grader and her mother, the North Naples Middle School teacher snuck up behind the student, shoved a bag of dead frogs in her face, and then dropped the bag on her desk. When the student began to cry, the teacher laughed at her in front of her classmates. The teacher then allegedly told students in other classes that if they tried to opt out of dissection, they would be sent to the principal's office for disciplinary action.

Not only did this teacher apparently violate students' right under Florida law to opt out of dissection, her reported behavior also may have violated the School Board of Collier County's policy against bullying and harassment and the Florida Department of Education's Code of Ethics. North Naples Middle School's principal initially told the student's mother that she would not be taking any action—the school district and state board of education stepped in only after PETA and the media became involved.   

We are calling on school district and state officials to remove this teacher from her post and revoke her state educator's certificate if the student's report is corroborated. We have also offered to buy the school modern, humane computer programs in order to allow the school to replace dissection entirely.

In this violent world, students' feelings of empathy for animals are a virtue that should be fostered, not belittled, by their educators and mentors.  

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Indian frogs are jumping up and down on their lily pads as Indian colleges and universities prepare to end classroom dissections in zoology and life-sciences courses.
 

sandhu/cc by 2.0

 
Dr. B.K. Sharma has served on an expert committee to compare dissection to modern approaches to science education. According to Dr. Sharma, the University Grants Commission (UGC)—the regulatory body for higher education in India—has chosen to take a stand against dissection by accepting the expert committee's recommendation that zoology and life-science students in India should no longer be required to perform dissections.

The move follows PETA India's extensive campaign to urge the UGC and its expert committee to do away with dissection requirements. If implemented, the change could save the lives of approximately 19 million animals each year. The UGC has now sent its recommendation to India's Department of Science and Technology for its input before the ban becomes official.

"The negative impact of this organized violence on young minds is already under scrutiny from psychologists and psychiatrists," says Dr. Sharma. "For this reason, I propose that the social science concept of ahisma, or nonviolence, be brought into life-sciences education if we wish to keep our reputation as a nation with traditional values and a compassionate disposition."

The UGC's panel of experts came to the same conclusion as has nearly every published study: Modern non-animal methods such as computer simulations, interactive CD-ROMs, films, charts, and lifelike models teach anatomy and biology as well as or better than do archaic and cruel animal laboratories. And it isn't just frogs who will be spared—mice, rats, guinea pigs, and rabbits have all suffered and died in university laboratories. As an added bonus, schools will no longer be required to spend money on animals for dissections in zoology and life-science courses, so more funds should be available for other academic programs.

Unfortunately, dissection remains legal stateside—for now. If you know of a student who is under pressure to dissect animals, check out peta2's wealth of information on dissection for each grade level.

Written by Michelle Sherrow