I believe in animal research. But it’s time to draw a line

Imagine, for a minute, that you’re a frog — a pro-science frog. You’re so pro-science that you’ve decided to donate yourself to it. You sign the consent forms, climb into the barrel and await your fate.

It’s all quite exciting, you think, as you travel the bumpy road to the lab. A huge sacrifice, but a chance to expand the shores of human knowledge. You might be part of a cure for cancer, or the common cold, or help to eliminate polio. Finally you emerge — and for the first time, a doubt does too.

You’re in a lab, sure, but instead of scientists, there are children everywhere — all dissecting frogs. ‘Dissecting’, though, is a loose description. One seems to have ripped the leg off his and stuck it down his neighbour’s shirt, in what surely can’t be a variable-controlled way. Another is carefully copying a diagram straight from the textbook.