Om Sai Ram
Sai Sanjeevini......healing fragrances
Piece by P.E.A.C.E.
(Protection of the Environment and All Creatures on Earth)
Compassionate Choices …...Peaceful Results 

Dear Peacemakers,  Sai Ram !
 
“Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as
valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar”
 
- Bradley Miller
The High Court recently ruled in India that dissections in schools should be made optional. While applauding this landmark decision - the Group for P.E.A.C.E. would like to make a case for completely banning this cruel and useless practice .

Why Biology has to be treated as different from any other subject like History and Geography is difficult to understand.  Why is it necessary for children to cut an animal simply to see what a vein or artery looks like - something that is not necessary at the present stage? How many of the children who take up Biology at school level are going to end up as surgeons? And does a dissection that has been performed on a frog 7 years earlier, bear any relevance to their becoming good surgeons?

Biology is a life science not a death science.  Today, children who take up Biology  as a school subject do so for many reasons. They could be interested in pursuing careers or interests in environment, botany,  natural and self help healing options, yoga, physiotherapy, physical fitness and much more. Pursuing allopathic medicine is certainly not the only reason - in fact less than 1% of the children who pass out each year take up this career.  And once they do decide to pursue an allopathic career they will do whatever the prescribed course suggests at the college level. In the meanwhile doing away with the practice of dissections at school level will save India more than 20 million frogs annually.

Frogs are nature's predators - they protect our plants and crops. They also destroy mosquitoes. W butcher them needlessly for dissections and then wonder why Malaria and Dengue have raised their ugly heads! And then, to a proliferation of mosquitoes we typically respond by killing the entire web of existence in the soil and water by spraying deadly chemicals. The mosquitoes develop immunity to the chemicals and thrive, while humans die of not only dengue and malaria but also liver cancer caused by the chemicals.

This is not all. The hidden and the major cost of dissection lies in the desensitisation of our  children. By the time they finish with school Biology  their natural instincts of compassion and caring are  brutally destroyed. It was shocking to read a statement by a teenager on the issue. She said  “You might think I am sadistic, but after the first few sessions you learn to treat the animals as rubber objects and you are most careful not to play with the harmless animals because it makes you feel attached to them”.  Is this what we want our children to become? Do we wish to inculcate in them a lack of respect for life? What kind of adults will they grow up into? What kind of a world will they build for themselves and others?  Is it not a paradox - a career in medicine is supposedly taken up because there is a passion to serve, heal and love  - how can these  be achieved if first the children  have to give up love and compassion? Is this the reason that the medical profession has become what it has?  Today the animals are “rubber objects” tomorrow the patients will be “rubber objects”.

The Group for Peace is committed to spreading awareness of the connection between cruelty to animals and human suffering - until we truly begin to consider all creatures as an integral and indispensable part of the web of life,  human kind cannot come out of the misery it finds itself in. Please join us in our endeavour to make people aware by sharing this information with as many people as you can.

 
 
Until next time - make the PEACE!
With prayers for peace from the Group for P.E.A.C.E.
 


"Whenever people say 'we mustn't be sentimental', you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, 'we must be realistic', they mean they are going to make money out of it." 
 
—Brigid Brophy 

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