Getting Cruelty Out of the Classroom

Jenna Morasca, winner of CBS’s hit show Survivor: the Amazon, is using her celebrity to deliver an important message to high school and college students. She stars in a new public service announcement about dissection created by PCRM.

In the ad, Jenna explains her view: “With all the great new alternatives to dissection, there’s no need to harm animals now or ever.”

As a University of Pittsburgh zoology major, Jenna refused to participate in animal dissection for a biology class, and her grade suffered. “Morally, it was worth it to me,” she says. “Life is more important.”

In more and more classrooms, however, students are winning the right to opt out of dissection exercises—with no penalty. The determination of teachers and students like Jenna has paved the way for these important changes. Dog labs, once common in U.S. medical schools, have been banned on the majority of campuses. Sophisticated computer models have made humane education the wave of the future.

That pleases many medical professionals. “As a doctor who performs autopsies, I can assure students that computer images of well-preserved tissues look more like the ‘real thing’ than the squishy gray organs of a formalin-fixed specimen,” explains Nancy L. Harrison, M.D., of the Scripps Memorial Hospital Chula Vista Department of Pathology.

Learn more about the issues and your choices at www.DissectionAlternatives.org.

PCRM thanks Jenna Morasca for her generous participation in this campaign. Since we couldn’t arrange a photo shoot in a remote Amazonian frog pond, the crew suffered through a grueling session in the wilds of photographer Harry Giglio’s Pittsburgh studio. Clockwise from left: stylist Shannon Ludrosky, publication director Doug Hall, research coordinator Megha Even, studio associate John Laska, makeup artist Xtina Connelly, and Jenna.