<p>Our high school does not require kids to do any dissecting and offers alternative homework relating to dissection on those days. Do colleges do the same or are you forced to do it?</p>
<p>I suppose you could refuse to do the dissection at my school, but it would affect your grade. If you're in a science/medical major, though, it's kind of a moot point if you don't dissect anything.</p>
<p>I haven't taken anat at my school, but I know it is required in that class. It's also part of the introductory bio sequence (which I did take). They straight out tell you that if you're not comfortable doing it, you should not take the class, period. There are exceptions for medical reasons, but that's it.</p>
<p>its usually required (cats,beef eyes,frogs,cadavers ect.) if you dont want to do it. the medical field is not for you</p>
<p>in my undergrad anatomy course we dont have an associated lab and dont do any dissections. but you prolly will have to in bio. if you cant handle dissections i dont recommend you to go into healthcare/medicine.</p>
<p>Why do you ask? That was probably the most intriguing and concretely satisfying stuff I did in my odyssey! (I remember cats in undergrad and cadavers in medical school.)</p>
<p>In my undergrad anatomy class this semester, we dissected a cat, bull testes, pig ovaries, cow bone, and sheep eye, brain, heart, and kidney. In high school we dissected a cat. My experience has been that the "hands on" aspect of dissection makes learning so much easier because you can relate things, where as with a picture you just stare and try to memorize.</p>
<p>O.K., that's gross^^^</p>
<p>My daughter is interested in physical or occupational therapy and both require anatomy. They come under the medical field, but don't involve bodily fluids. Should she rule out these majors based on dissecting?</p>
<p>I believe the vast majority of undergrad human anatomy classes are going to require dissection. If she's uncomfortable with that, maybe PT/OT isn't for her (I'm sure she'd have to dissect again in her grad program anyway).</p>
<p>The school that I attend is fairly uncommon in that we actually use human cadavers which are dissected for us, so there's no actual cutting to do, but a lot of standing over dead bodies - if she's squeamish, this would probably bother her.</p>
<p>It really works better if you think of bodies as AMAZING! rather than gross....</p>
<p>Most colleges list in their catalogue which courses require dissection. From what I've seen after reviewing a lot of catalogues, there are often maybe one or two 100-level courses that don't require it, and then after that, it becomes mandatory. I don't think you could easily major in Biology, for example, without doing dissection. And just taking a grade hit by refusing to do the dissection but completing all the other assignments often isn't possible because instructors will make the dissection mandatory in order for successful completion of the course. Unfortunately, if you have ethical objections to dissection (as I do), you really can't get around it much in college.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: In high school, they can make you do what they want. In college, it's your choice which classes to take. You choose to take a class, you agree to do what's asked of you. You can't try to back out after the fact.</p>
<p>The anatomy course at my school is in the physical anthropology department, so no dissecting there--but physiology is in the bio dept., so in intro there's lots of quality time with fetal pigs, sheep heart, brain, and eye, and frogs (which are actually still alive, but pithed so they can't feel anything). Advanced mammalian physiology lab also has lots of dissection; you don't learn as well without it, and it's fun :)</p>
<p>toledo, I know that both the PT and OT programs at my school include gross anatomy with human cadavers, the same course our med students take. I'm not sure if that's a common requirement, but it's worth looking into. If those are professions that interest her I think she owes it to herself to at least try dissecting--and better in high school than in undergrad when she could fail a course for not doing the labs.</p>
<p>In high school, we dissected an earthworm and a frog. It's really not that bad if you can get over the fact that the thing is dead.
If you're interested in any sort of medical/biological major, you're basically going to HAVE to do some dissecting. I mean think about it, would you want your doctor performing surgery on you if he'd never actually cut anything open before??</p>
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The school that I attend is fairly uncommon in that we actually use human cadavers which are dissected for us, so there's no actual cutting to do, but a lot of standing over dead bodies - if she's squeamish, this would probably bother her.
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<p>There are even some med schools going this route (prosection)... not sure I agree, but hey, if it works for them.</p>
<p>I wasn't aware that some med schools are doing that...it doesn't sound like such a good idea to me. Prosection worked OK for us as undergrads, considering we weren't going that in-depth (skeletal muscles, organs, major nerves), but to know the material on the level that med students need to, I think dissection and actually getting your hands in there and doing the cutting would be a much more effective tool.</p>
<p>At my school we actually have a cool course called Immersive Virtual Anatomy. You use some neat technology to do virtual dissections. I haven't taken it but the reviews are good.</p>
<p>That said, I took a course on vertebrate anatomy and evolution where we dissected lampreys, sharks, cats, and sheep brains, and I loved it. But some people might have been bothered by our class...the TAs thought it was funny to put a severed cat's head in a dish for our lab practical.</p>