Why Not Kill Dogs?

Lawrence A.Hansen, M.D.
Associate Professor of Pathology
and Neuroscience
UCSD School of Medicine

As a physician, neuroscientist, and associate professor at UCSD School of Medicine, my opposition to dog vivisection is perceived by some of my colleagues as eccentric. Why oppose killing dogs for education? Well ... dogs are special animals.

When I compare dog and human brains the similarities far outnumber the differences. It's true dogs have smaller frontal lobes, which explains their lack of inhibition (e.g., butt sniffing) and unfortunately also accounts for their poor judgment in relying on the kindness of humans. But the very similarities that make dogs "good models" for human physiology and pharmacology labs are good reasons why we shouldn't be killing creatures so like ourselves.

Because dogs and humans are more alike than different we should treat dogs more like we would want to be treated ourselves. During a particularly awful moment in his tragedy, King Lear despairs, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods! They kill us for their sport!" Well, that may or may not be true of the gods or of God, but to dogs we humans are gods. We made them what they are through millennia of selective breeding until they became the perfect companion animal -- loyal, loving, devoted. They only want to please us. It is a betrayal of trust and of the bond between men and dogs to so casually kill them for minuscule educational benefit. We can and should choose to be merciful gods, unlike those tormenting Lear for sport, or boys pulling the wings off flies.

Some argue that no one wants to kill dogs, but it is a necessary evil for medical education. But since graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the Mayo Clinic medical schools (and most others in the U.S.) have become pretty good physicians without killing dogs, it's hard to avoid concluding that dog vivisection is not necessary. Once you remove the "necessary" from necessary evil, only the evil remains. An ancient Greek playwright observed that when little boys throw rocks at frogs, it's a game to the boys but it's life and death to the frogs. Once we have grown beyond boyhood we realize the damage our actions cause, and most of us try to refrain from gratuitous cruelty. Once we realize that dog vivisection is unnecessary (see Stanford, Yale, Harvard, etc.) we should stop doing it simply because, if we listen to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our natures," we know that killing faithful friends is wrong.

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