Drugged-Up Knife Violence Victims on Hopkins Campus

In Hopkins’ anatomy class, students learn about cardiac function through live frog dissections. Frogs are taken from a terrarium, dipped in tricaine (an anesthetic to numb them), then pitted by inserting a needle through the base of the skull to destroy the central nervous system. These steps are to ensure the frog cannot sense any external stimuli before the dissection begins. A computer simulation of a frog does not pulse with the same irregular, living rhythm. A preserved heart does not beat. In fact, after conducting a quick survey in a Hopkins ninth-grade biology classroom, 60% of the students felt that dissection deepened their engagement with class material. 

By every scientific measure we trust, the frog cannot feel pain after that. For some students, that distinction matters. For the frog, probably less so. The frog isn't alive by any scientific definition, but it is still alive enough to make us question the ethics of this practice. To be fair, the anatomy curriculum does not ignore this tension. Students spend several class periods leading up to the lab discussing the ethics of animal use and this procedure specifically. However, live animal dissections are no longer common in most high schools; most programs have retired the scalpel in favor of simulations and models. In medicine, animals are used to save lives, but in a classroom, the stakes are lower: the purpose is learning. Ripley Chance '26, a student taking anatomy, described the lab as an emotional weight of ethical hang-ups. She noted how divided the room felt. "I'm going straight to hell," one student said. Another whispered, "Oh, the frog is pregnant, I feel so bad." But just a few feet away, someone else leaned in: "Whoa, its heart is actually beating, that's so cool," and simply, "this was such a cool experience." A similar dynamic arose as I talked to my cousin, who is in medical school; she agreed on the necessity of these dissections. But she said she cannot “thank them for their sacrifice,” because nothing about it feels voluntary. Every animal she has worked with resists with full strength. It struggles, it fights, in whatever way it can, to stay alive. Then, in a moment, it is gone, motionless, reduced to a set of tissues and organs on the table, before being carelessly discarded.

There is a strange paradox at the heart of these lab dissections. Many of these students have pets. Some have rescued injured animals. They would never cause unnecessary harm to a living creature. Yet here they are, scalpel in hand, watching a frog's heart beat outside its chest. That tension is not hypocrisy, but proximity. The live dissection feels different from a dead one, not because the frog suffers more, but because students are closer to the moment of death. Most people eat burgers without thinking about the slaughterhouse. But put them in the slaughterhouse, and suddenly the burger sits differently. That does not make the burger eater a hypocrite. Not because the animal died any differently, but because they watched. The anatomy lab removes that buffer. And that removal leaves students with a question most of us avoid: Is our respect for animals real, or does it only go as far as our discomfort allows?

As I am writing this article, I find myself unable to answer this question. But I do know this: humans depend on animals in ways that we will not abandon soon, whether it’s in research, labs, or classrooms. And like most problems in this world, the issue is grey. Total acceptance or total rejection rarely brings any real change. So as long as this dependency on animals exists, so will our obligation. It will be our responsibility to minimize their suffering. To ensure this, before their deaths, those animals will need to live with as little pain and as much care as we can manage. These experimental animals are often treated with the bare minimum because they are seen as destined to die, and their quality of life becomes easier to ignore when you are in that mindset. I am not urging you to walk away from these practices; I am calling for more deliberation. To be more honest about the standards we set. How we treat them. How we use them. How we dispose of them. And what we are willing to call acceptable. 

So no, Tiana’s prince does not get his kiss. Instead, he gets a needle through the base of his skull, a scalpel to his chest, and a bunch of teenagers trying to see his heartbeat on a tray. But hopefully, those students learned not only from the anatomy of its heart, but also the discomfort that dissection forces us to confront.