Genetics and environment each play a part, I suppose, but cruelty can be a learned behavior. The price point means this is more likely to be used by people who will take it seriously, but it just struck me as a particularly ghoulish piece of kit to put next to the microscope and chemistry set. I read "A Father's Story" not too long ago, so maybe that doesn't help the cause.

On the other hand, most of us had at least a couple dissections under our belt by high school, and it wasn't like those critters willingly offered themselves up towards our erudition, either. A practical education in science did seem to involve doing things we could have just read about in books, even if it caused a few nitric acid stains here and there and dozens of fetal pigs to lay down their lives, so maybe I'm being too quick to judge.

Now, are marketeers in general psychopaths? I don't think it's a hard and fast rule...