Vegan ITP, need some help.

[Hoplite]

Hi,

(first of all, I hope this isn't against the rules, as this isn't technically politics)
(second, please bare with my english, it is not so good)

Basically, I would like to have some advice here. You see, I have been a vegan for quite some time now and am having trouble with chosing a subject to study for University. For almost my entire life I wanted to study biology, but now the fact that I do not want to test on animals and do not want to use reagents that are made of animals is becoming a serious problem. I would like to know how you deal with such problems.

Also, I hope we can have a thread without turning it into a flame war. I know there are some vegan/vegetarian boards on the internet but I have experienced this website to be very friendly, more so than any other internet community and that makes me prefer to ask for advice here.

[Lord Herman]

If I were you, I'd contact the university where you want to study, and ask them if there's some way you can study biology without having to use animal products.

[Hoplite]

Yes, I think that is the best solution. The thing is, I start to question my original reason for becoming a vegan. Veganism isn´t about making sure you have clean hands, it is about causing the least possible suffering. I think I should just try to decrease it as much as I can, but I will always cause some suffering, just by being alive, and therefore I think I should maybe just accept the fact that some of the products I am going to use are made of animals.

Thanks,

[dish]

I'd suggest that you also look into which specific major you'd be most likely to specialise in. Nowadays universities don't just offer courses in biological science, but instead present courses ranging from biochemistry and biotechnology to ecological science, immunology, developmental biology, microbiology, genetics, neuroscience, and zoology. Some of these are more likely to involve animal experimentation and products than others.

[xPANCAKEx]

there are organisations out there that specialise in medical testing without animals - might be worth contacting a few of them, see what routes they advise into the field

[Lemur]

Talk to professors and students about your concerns. They will be able to address your concerns much better than us, in all likelihood. Also, remember that if worst comes to worst, you have the option of changing your field of study.

[Serpentine]

If you're going to do biology, disections are probably going to figure majorly in it, as well as experiments (non-harmful) with live animals. It might be worth asking where they get their specimens from. At my university they've used, in my classes, canetoads (a major pest), mice, dunnarts (a native mouse-like carnivore), marmosets (the only ones in Australia not just used for their eyeballs) and blue-tongue lizards for the live experiments, and canetoads, rats (farmed ones), trout (wild-caught, they sure were tasty), pigeons (no idea where they got those), some others I can't remember, and some wild animals such as flying foxes and possums that were found injured and didn't survive treatment. I can see that some of these you might be okay with using and others you probably wouldn't, so yeah, I'd say ask where they get the specimens from, and see whether it'd be possible to skip out on/just observe/replace the ones you don't want to do.