• Question: Do you agree with animal experementation?

    Asked by henry8th to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 8 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by martha, siobhanb, romillycarrick, sebisepic, joeb, anon-30036, 09duahi, ameliajwestern.
    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Ah, a controversial topic, like it. I think that animal testing for cosmetics (like toothpaste) is not needed.

      However, for research we really know so little about life and how bodies work that animals allow us to really test things that you can’t with humans, like what happens if we don’t have a certain fighter cell and we get the flu. Or does a new drug has side effects?

      I do think that there are a lot of cases where we can see that what we see in animals isn’t what we see on humans. I guess overall animals are a good place to start if we don’t know much, but humans are what most research is aimed to treat so they’re the best to use!

    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Hmmm…..this is a difficult one. I suppose it is never nice to think of an animal being used to test things on, in case it has a bad effect but I do believe it is necessary in some areas of scientific research. I agree with Stef, that testing things like perfumes and make-up on animals is not needed – in fact, all testing like that is now banned in the UK! Testing out new medicines is needed though, to minimise the serious side effects that could happen in a human. In the UK, I think you have to test a new drug out in 2 different mammals before you can try it in a human.

      It is not nice to think about animals being used like this, but there are lots of things done to make it as safe as possible for the animal and to make sure they are cared for and looked after as well as they can be.

      It is a controversial issue, and lots of people get very angry about it, but if we didn’t have animal testing there wouldn’t be so many drugs, surgical procedures and new treatments for horrible diseases that would kill millions of humans otherwise so yes, I do agree with animal testing for medical research (I just don’t like to think about it too much!)

    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      If you asked me this question 5 years ago I would have said no! I always wanted to be a vet and love animals and it used to disgust me just the sheer thought of it. I used to hate walking into my local city centre and seeing those terrible photos that showed dreadful images of animal experiments and vowed I could never do anything like that! Fast forward to now and I spend a large proportion of my day doing just that! What made me change my mind? Well, I quickly realised that almost everything we know about science and every drug we take to cure a disease, has been developed thanks to the help of animals in research!

      Thankfully in the UK we have really strict rules and regulations about using animals in research and it has to be the last resort and only used when no other option is possible. The animals are kept in better conditions than most pets and the procedures that are performed on them are approved by a vet to ensure that they do not cause any unnecessary harm or distress. I know from personal experience that the mice I work with live happy lives with their brother and sisters, they have a constant supply of food and warmth and I look after them properly so they are never in pain! Do I enjoy working with them and performing these experiments? Not particularly, but I wouldn’t be able to understand what happens to the whole body during diabetes and try to find ways to fix it if I only worked with a dish of cells of a computer programme. Don’t get me wrong, those types of experiments can really help my research too, but to be able to benefit people one day, research has to be performed on animals. In particular, when we are testing new drugs, before we can give them to healthy or sick patients, we need to find out what dose to give and whether they actually work and so animals are our only option.

      Thankfully, the actual numbers of animals used for experimentation each year is quite low (3 million) compared to those used for food (9 billion) or even killed by cats (2 billion!!). And using animals for cosmetic research was banned in 1998. So the horrible pictures and anti-vivisection protesters show are really out of date and many were actually taken in India!

      I think animal experimentation is a really important subject that many people are scared to talk about and teaching young adults such as yourselves about this is something scientists really should do more!

    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I think it’s becoming clearer that animal research does not always point in the right direction or tell us about all the side-effects of drugs we make. Using primates in research for me is a complete no-no; even smaller, but still sentient animals I struggle with. I think more research should be done on human volunteers; I have even done this myself and have the scars to prove it (drug-trials as a medical student).

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