Talk:Vivisection

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• Talk:Vivisection/Archive 1

My edits

I've turned this into a dab page, directing the reader to Animal testing, History of animal testing, and Human experimentation, as the page was just a repeat of material from those articles. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 00:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I see you finally found a way to get rid of edits you didn't like.... Quite clever! Nrets 18:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Why is this a disambiguation page?

It makes no sense for me, a first time visitor to this page, that it is a disambiguation page, whether its to animal or human testing. I'm not saying the info shouldn't be here. "Vivisection" is employed as a method. But it doesn't make vivisection itself ambiguous. --tessc (talk) 23:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, so I changed it. I suggest this isn't a disambiguation page because vivisection isn't ambiguous. I also suggest it could stand some expansion; perhaps something about the history of the practice, something about its falling into disuse and/or disrepute, the adoption of the term as a pejorative - there might be others. User:SlimVirgin has essentially reverted my edits I think. SlimVirgin, would you mind posting a quick note of explanation please? Thanks! --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, we had an article on human and animal vivisection, but the animal material was repeated almost exactly in Animal testing and History of animal testing, so the human material was moved to Human experimentation, which is now called Human subject research. This page was therefore left as a disambiguation page.

The practice on humans has fallen into disuse, although not on animals, and the term "vivisection" is still used to refer to animal experiments; see Encyclopaedia Britannia, for example. [1] It's not clear what the point would be of having a separate article under this title. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 16:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I think one benefit of a separate article is that it could help to distinguish between vivisection and other forms of human and animal testing; said another way, it might avoid most clearly the potential implication that any human and animal testing could be considered vivisection. As animal testing says, ' The word "vivisection" is preferred by those opposed to this research, whereas scientists typically use the term "animal experimentation." ' To be clear, I'm not suggesting you or anyone else endorses that implication, only that the article might be read that way.

My motivation here is as a member of the disambiguation project. This page has many inbound links and if it remains a dab page then we'll need to change them. That would be fine if it were simply a dab page but I do think there's worthwhile content to be housed here instead of split across other pages.

In any event, thanks for your thoughts. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Some people claim the term is used negatively, but as you can see the EB does not use it negatively, but descriptively. The point here is that I don't know what we could include on a page called "vivisection" that isn't include in the articles about human and animal experiments, and to create a separate article would, I think, lead to all kinds of POV problems, because some people would try to stop regular experiments being described on that page. So it would lead to disputes with no clear benefit in terms of content.

I don't see why this wouldn't be regarded as a regular dab page. It refers to a word that is used in different ways, which is the usual reason for needing a dab page. SlimVirgin ^{(talk)(contribs)} 17:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The concern, as I see it, is that by having it as a dab, editors will disambiguate links to vivisection to, most likely, animal testing. This has already happened once in good faith, before I intervened. There are two problems with such redirections. Firstly, it is not always strictly accurate to say that vivisection = animal testing, especially in a historical context. Secondly, in doing that we are tacitly endorsing the aim of the animal rights lobby to suggest that all animal testing = "the cutting up of living animals" (when, in fact, there is very little true vivisection going on in animal experimentation these days). I don't mind leaving it as a short article, essentially redirecting to one of the two other articles, but the term "vivisection" should link here to enable readers to appreciate what the real meaning of the term is, rather than what one lobby would like readers to believe. Rockpocket 17:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

(EC) I couldn't see the EB link; it was behind a "premium content" filter. It might be idealistic of me but avoiding POV problems doesn't seem like a good basis for construction here. As to the dab page, I'll respectfully disagree there too; there's one meaning, applicable to different subjects. Exaggerating to make my point, I'll extend that to saying paint should disambiguate between housepaint and carpaint? That would be silly.--AndrewHowse (talk) 17:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, so the primary argument from SlimVirgin appears to be that in the modern world, vivisection is used to refer to all animal testing and thus this page would automatically be redundant to animal testing. So, I looked at various online dictionaries. Out of 11 dictionaries I looked at, 9 had vivisection solely defined as the cutting into, dissection of, operation on, or painful experimentation on a live animal. The other two had that as their primary definition, with the acknowledgment that it is used broadly as a term for general experimentation, but one of them said after that "especially if considered to cause distress to the subject". So yes, some people use it to refer to animal research in general. But not most. So for the sake of NPOV, I feel I must strongly agree that vivisection should have an article here, with only a small section on general animal experimentation preceded by a link to the main article, as is customary in these cases. Otherwise we are tacitly endorsing the classification of all animal research as vivisection, which in my opinion due to its history would have a negative connotation even without the dictionary definitions. Here are my dictionary links, in case you are curious: [2], [3], [4]--Dycedarg ж 21:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Expand Tag

This article fails to describe what vivisection is. There are a lot of surgical procedures that involve an animal with a CNS, but probably vivisection. CrussianObadagus (talk) 21:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Illustration

It seems it is NOT vivisection of a frog. It's just autopsy. The frog is dead. I am a physiology student from MSU (Moscow) and I did it myself. If you say it's vivisection, please tell me what kind of experiment is it. I know no experiments in vivo with such preparation. I think it's necessary to replace the image. --Rotatoria (talk) 01:33, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no way you can say that the frog in this image was dead prior to being dissected. Frequently, dissection/vivisection of frogs in educational institutions begins with a live frog, so this would be an illustration of vivisection. It could be more clear, but I think the image is OK in this article. Bob98133 (talk) 13:36, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

To be a smartass, technically any dead frog must've been a live frog at some point. More seriously, I do agree that it's impossible to tell. Since it's a photo, you can't tell if it's breathing or has a pulse (though both can cease during routine survival surgery on frogs with no ill effects, due to their ultra-low metabolic rate). The lungs are obviously perfused with air, and the tissue color shows that it's not been fixed in formalin. It may be alive and drugged with any of a dozen or more agents (chloroform, ether, MS-222, clove oil, etc.), or may be freshly dead. I actually suspect it's dead, simply because of the extent of dissection that's gone on. The image details say it's been chloroformed, but that can be a method of euthanasia (and usually is - gasses are hard to control without special equipment). Mokele (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

However, while the state of the frog cannot be assessed, I do wonder about it from a NPOV standpoint. It's very unclear what's actually going on: is the frog alive or dead, is it anaesthetized or not, etc., and it's rather graphic. It seems like just the sort of "shock graphic" tactics often used by animal rights folks, and I'm not sure WP should be engaging in that. The lack of clarity only compounds that - if a reader saw it and thought the frog was alive and un-drugged, they'd be horrified and that would affect their reading of the page, while if they thought it was dead (as I suspect), it's no more shocking that any of a thousand dissection photos we have up. It doesn't really add much to the article, anyway. Thoughts? Mokele (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

This is an interesting question, and it hadn't occurred to me before. Your point about "shock graphic" tactics is, unfortunately, a chronically valid one throughout animal-related articles at Wikipedia at this time. In this case, it didn't catch my attention, because it seemed to me to be uncontroversially an image of a dissection. However, you are right. Labeling it as "vivisection" clearly implies that the process is occurring on a still-living frog, which is obviously untrue. There's nothing wrong with using this as an illustration of one aspect of animal experimentation, as it is at Animal testing, but using it here is unambiguously wrong, and potentially POV. The caption at that other page is much more accurate and informative, and I'm going to replace it to here. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Regarding that caption, what does "terminal anesthesia" mean? My first thought was that the frog was given a lethal dose of chloroform, but I googled "terminal anesthesia" and it looks like it is a technical term about deadening terminal nerves or something. I could be wrong, but that doesn't seem to be something chloroform would be used for or something that would be done to a frog. If the frog was dead at the time, the caption is still wrong since it calls the procedure a vivisection. If it is not an actual vivisection, it shouldn't be used here. - JefiKnight (talk) 04:59, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

You know what, I think that you are exactly right. (By the way, although "terminal" here is intended to mean "leading to death", the sources you found were using it in terms of axon terminal. Just fyi.) The image is of a dissection, not a vivisection, and its appearance here is simply the residue of a history of POV edits. I'm going to remove it from this page, and correct the image caption at Animal testing. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

• The frog was alive during the dissection process. I could see its heart beating and its lung expanding and contracting. A bit more "evidence" is available in this graphic image. I am returning the image to the article --Muhammad(talk) 00:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I see that you are absolutely correct, and I was mistaken. Thank you for setting this right. And my apologies for the part of my comment above that I now have struck out. I had come to that conclusion based on some other edits I've seen, but I was just flat-out wrong in saying that here. Again, my apologies. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Unit 731

As a non-expert on the topic, I'm somewhat confused by the Unit 731 section. Why is this example explored in such detail here when there is a complete page devoted to it? Is this the only example of human vivisection? How is the quote from Dr. Yuasa relevant to vivisection itself?

I'd suggest leaving a link to unit 731 in the context of a broader discussion of human vivisection: what is the history? who has practiced it? why have they done so? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Doctor Zook (talk • contribs) 20:01, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed; and I too am not an expert on this topic - the quote from Dr. Yuasa is relevant to the ethics of human vivisection and specifically "our" concerns and personal difficulties with conducting human vivisection, but does not have to do with vivisection itself. A link to unit 731 should be created on this page though. 68.183.92.83 (talk) 20:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Other instances of human vivisection have been perpetrated during history: by Josef Mengele, for one example. I think this detailed and singular example of human vivisection leads the reader to believe that this is the only time human vivisection has been perpetrated. A more accurate section might include the Whys of human vivisection (torture and "scientific study") and perhaps a link-list of other articles like Unit 731 and Josef Mengele. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.241.49.94 (talk) 20:39, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Opposition section

There was recently a brief edit war over what is now the "Opposition" section. It was originally two sections added by a first-time editor. After restoring the material, I tagged it and combined it into a single section. I think there is no justification for calling it vandalism. However, I will note several problems with it. It is sourced only to a URL that appears to be a dead link. It reads like an essay. It is difficult to ascertain whether it presents the history in a balanced way, reflecting the most important persons and events. These issues, at a minimum, do need to be fixed in order that the material not be deleted. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

It's massively NPOV and clearly added to press a given POV, reads like a term paper, and I strongly suspect was copied in entirety from that link before it was dead. It adds nothing to the page. The writing is nothing short of terrible, the anecdotes are worthless and unsourced, the chief subject is one guy who isn't notable enough to warrant a WP page, there's OR throughout, and it's completely unsalvagable. Seriously, go through line by line and delete everything that's unsourced and/or OR, and you've got nothing left. Mokele (talk) 20:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't disagree. But it's not right to treat it as vandalism, and I think you overstate the case that it was really so one-sided (it did say some things critical of anti-vivisectionists). I've pruned it to where there is just a bit left. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:06, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Frog vivisection.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Return to DAB status

Frankly, I'm not sure why this page is even here. All of the information is already on other pages is MUCH better and more complete states, namely animal testing, Unit 731, and Nazi_human_experimentation. Any user, regardless of opinion on the topic or interest area, will find the information here paltry and unsatisfactory, and simply click-through the links to the other, better pages. Having this page is analagous to making Serpent a non DAB, containing a handful of random facts from each subheading, rather than it's current, correct state. I say we keep the intro, modify it into DAB style, and just link to the various affiliate pages. HCA (talk) 01:51, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't a general topic article on the procedure type be more beneficial than a DAB with a single intro? --Katangais (talk) 03:11, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

But what would the content be? As it stands, there's only two uses, a pejorative for animal testing and for the sorts of torture used in Unit 731, and in both cases, there's far richer and fuller information elsewhere on WP. So far as I know, there's no other use, so any information located on this page would be as it is now: a bit of info duplicated from each but not enough to be useful.

Essentially, if we have a word "A", which has two disparate meanings, "B" and "C", each of which has its own rich, full page, why not just make "A" a disambiguation? Otherwise it winds up as this awkward hybrid, trying to mash together two disparate topics and not really doing justice to either. HCA (talk) 18:42, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Hide

The horrible pictures. Leave it to the viewer whether or not to see it. Those are horrible picture and kids are wandering in here.

P.S. Please feel free to correct my English in order to improve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.57.205.219 (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Abu Ghraib "live surgeries" should be included in the Human vivisection section

The page on the Abu Ghraib tortures and prisoner abuse has several pictures of "live surgery" on detainees. This should be used as evidence to mention these incidents in the "Human vivisection" section of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.80.164.161 (talk) 02:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

too harsh picture

We should use a more moderate picture or at least hide it so the readers can see it if they want to. too harsh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.57.205.60 (talk) 08:58, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

This issue has been discussed before, and the image (I assume you are talking about the frog) has been moved lower on the page as a result. For the most part, the consensus at Wikipedia is that we do not remove or hide such images, per WP:NOTCENSORED. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)