The number nobody keeps
By the best available estimate, about 12 million animals are killed every year for dissection in education in the United States alone.1 It is an estimate because there is no official count: statistics on animals used for dissection are not maintained, so nobody can say how many it really is.
Most of those animals are used once. A specimen is opened, studied for an afternoon, and is then gone. A student who did not see the brachial plexus clearly that day does not get a second plexus.
What the studies found
Andrew Knight reviewed the published comparisons of humane teaching methods with harmful animal use.2 Among eleven veterinary studies published between 1989 and 2006:
| Learning outcome with the humane method | Studies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Better | 5 of 11 | 45.5% |
| As good | 5 of 11 | 45.5% |
| Worse | 1 of 11 | 9.1% |
Across 21 studies in other biomedical fields the pattern was the same: 38.1% better, 52.4% as good, 9.5% worse. We quote the worse result as well, because a page that only tells you the good half is not worth reading.
What we built
Vetomica is four complete animals, the cat, the dog, the pig and the horse, with 5,965 named structures between them. Each is one specimen in one pose, with every layer modelled on the same body. Every structure is a separate piece with its veterinary Latin name and its English one.
It is built to do what a single dissection cannot. Every student can open the same animal at once. A cut can be undone. A section can be slid through the trunk and slid back. A lecturer can save the exact view for next year. A student can come back to the forelimb the night before the exam, and the night after that.
Every fact says where it came from
A reference is only as good as your ability to check it. So each fact in the atlas is one of two kinds, and says which. Some are measured on this specimen: what a structure touches, where it lies, how deep it sits. Others, origin, insertion, action and innervation, are quoted from a named reference, and the reference is named under the fact.
Where the model stops, the atlas says so on the screen. The radiograph says it is not a diagnostic image. A nerve block on a model that has one of its four nerves says ‘Partial: 1 of 4 nerves modelled’. A consult for a ligament that is not modelled shows the joint it stabilises and says that is what it is doing.
What we will not claim
A screen does not teach the feel of tissue under a blade, the weight of a limb or the smell of a theatre, and we do not pretend it does. Clinical skills are learned on living patients under supervision. What a model can do is make sure the student who arrives there already knows what is where, and why.
Whether Vetomica replaces a dissection in a given course is a decision for that faculty. Our job is to make the humane option good enough that the decision is easy.
Free, for good
Every animal, every layer, every name and every written fact is free, and stays free, so that no student has to dissect an animal to learn what is where. The tools that stand in for the dissection itself, and the consult room for practices, are how the work is paid for.