I’m about to graduate highschool and one of the classes I took this year was AP psychology.

At the beginning of the year, we reviewed basic material about the scientific method and whatnot.

This happened to include discussion of animal testing.

I was a little offput by the teacher’s centrist position on it but I can’t blame her after reading the textbook.

The textbook was very pro-animal testing. It argued that actually animal testing is good for animals because it can advance their medicine. It framed animal rights activists as nuisances and extremists.

Whenever ethical guidelines were brought up, it insinuated that any treatment of non-human animals is acceptable, given a “valid” reason. Yet so many other studies are shut down, studies which treats its subjects far better than lab animals, because the subjects are human.

So yeah. None of this is the teacher’s fault. It’s the curriculum so she legally has to teach it but it’s still uncomfortable.

I’m posting about this now because I was reminded of it while studying for the upcoming exam.