Virginia School Takes Down Disturbing ‘Blood
and Guts’ Web Site
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the images posted
on the Internet by Virginia students speak volumes. In the aptly
named “Blood and Guts” class, at the Governor’s
School for gifted students held at Lynchburg College in Virginia,
students photographed themselves mugging with animal organs, posing
with pig fetuses, and pretending to eat animal intestines. The
Web site explained that over the entirety of the course, students
dissected a wide range of animals, including sharks, snakes, turtles,
frogs, minks, and pigeons.
PCRM contacted the Governor’s
School to express concern about the course, and the Web site was
immediately taken down. Despite that action, Lynchburg’s
local newspaper, the News and
Advance, and other newspapers around the state covered PCRM’s
concerns about the gruesome course.
 “Sociological studies
have demonstrated that dissection encourages an attitude of such
moral indifference that students commonly carry out vulgar mutilations
on the animals by the end of the lesson,” wrote Jonathan
Balcombe, Ph.D., a PCRM ethologist and animal behavior expert, in a letter
to the school. “This behavior is particularly distressing since these
students are among the brightest in their high schools, and they intend to
pursue medical careers. The barbaric, vile behaviors that ‘Blood and
Guts’ incites bears no resemblance to the compassion required to be a
doctor.”
Jim Koger, director of the program at the Governor’s School,
cited concerns about cost as a reason for not using alternative
teaching methods. However, there are many low-cost and free alternatives,
such as having students shadow veterinarians and surgeons, or using
one of many state-of-the-art dissection simulators. Simulators
are often more cost-effective than dissection, because they can
be used by many students year after year. In fact, PCRM is offering
a free copy of Digital Frog II, an interactive CD-ROM that uses
animation, video, narration, and still images to create a realistic
dissection experience, at www.DissectionAlternatives.org.
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