• Question: Doyou like dissecting things? Does it bother you that they were alive once?

    Asked by ninakatherine to Chris, Eva, Michael, Paddy, Philip on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Chris Jordan

      Chris Jordan answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I expect this will be a question for one of the other scientists, but I’m not a complete vegetarian, so I do sometimes eat meat – which means that I cut it up first! I try to only eat meat occasionally and go for free range if I can.

    • Photo: Paddy Brock

      Paddy Brock answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I do enjoy dissecting things. We’ve learnt so much about biology and physiology from looking inside the bodies of all sorts of different animals. You can find surprising things during dissection too. I find sea lion kidneys, for example, extraodinarily beautiful, as they have a lobed external structure (i.e. they appears to be covered in smooth bumps) with a blue sheen that looks almost iridescent (i.e. shiny like a butterfly’s wing). It does affect me that I’m dealing with something that was once alive and now isn’t, but we can use what we learn from dead organisms to help living ones.

    • Photo: Michael Wharmby

      Michael Wharmby answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I’m not a biologist so I try not to disect things, unless as Chris says, I’m going to eat it!

    • Photo: Eva Bachmair

      Eva Bachmair answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      No, I don’t like dissecting animals and it kind of bothers me to have an aminal experiment if there is not a really good cause. Maybe that is why I do my study with humans who give me answers without killing them. 😉

    • Photo: Philip Denniff

      Philip Denniff answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I don’t do dissections and never have, but I work for an industry that does. Does it bother me – yes – but on the other side of the equation is an anti-malaria drug that could save 800,000 lives a year.

      As part of developing a new drug, by law, it must first be tested on animals, before it is tested on humans. All groups that use animals in science have a program to reduce the number of animals use, replace them with something else and lessen the amount of stress they are put under.

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