On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:26:38 +0100, B Vaughan wrote:

More recently, a young girl in New Jersey who was a committed
vegetarian and animal rights activist won in court the right to be
able to study biology without having to dissect animals. The court
ordered the school to find some other way of teaching her anatomy, for
instance with computer simulations.

I studied Biology at university from 1978 in the UK, we had disections and
other practicals to do that some might find unpleasant or unethical.
Nothing was compulsory. Either they could just watch someone else do it, or
come to some agreement with the staff to learn the anatomy. Computer
simulations were non-existent in those days. I didn't think that was
particularly unusual even then. When you say "recently" and "won the right"
worries me that this sort of attitude is still common.
Even at secondary school in Biology lessons we weren't forced to do
anything like that (although, most of us boys were chomping at the bit to
collect beakersfull of saliva, throw half-dissected bulls-eyes around the
room and slip a skinned lab-rat in to other pupils' school bags).

--
Tim.

If the human brain were simple enough that we could understand it, we would
be so simple that we couldn't.