The practice of dissecting live animals for experimental purposes. Research includes experiments which look for the effects of new drugs, food additives, cosmetics, and a wide range of chemicals on the body tissue and behaviour of such animals as guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, and monkeys, as an alternative to using human subjects. Such research is now strictly controlled by legislation in most Western nations, but nonetheless provokes considerable public opposition in some countries, including the use of violence against scientists and research organizations by animal rights extremists.
Etymologically, vivisection refers to the dissection of, or any cutting or surgery upon, a living animal. More generally, it is used to describe any invasive experiment upon living animals, or any live animal testing, typically for the purpose of physiological or pathological scientific investigation.
Animal testing
Modern codes of practice like those issued by the U.S. National Institute of Health or the British Home Office require that major surgery on laboratory animals be performed under deep anaesthesia.
Human vivisection
Vivisection has long been practiced on human beings.
Human volunteers can consent to be subjects for invasive experiments which may involve, for example, the taking of tissue samples (biopsies), or other procedures which require surgery on the volunteer. Despite this, the term is generally recognized as pejorative: one would never refer to life-saving surgery, for example, as "vivisection." The use of the term vivisection when referring to procedures performed on humans almost always implies a lack of consent, as it does when it is practiced on non-humans. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003) Vivisections at Kyushu University Hospital in 1945 "Vivisection - Absurd", a website that argues that vivisection is cruel, unscientific and a danger to human health New England Anti-Vivisection Society RDS online in defence of vivisection for biomedical research
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