• Question: what is your opinion on useing animals in tests?

    Asked by bigbellychimp to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by 06knightj, elliesmelly, sahima, indre1997, daiiseyy, caliscrazy, cazza.
    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Good question. So I don’t work on animals I work on bacteria. That said I do know people who do perform experiments on animals, mainly on mice. I do think it is important to do that work as there are questions that will benifit us in terms of health that we can only answer by doing these experiments. That said I do think that the use should be controlled.

      In fact in the UK we have some of the strictest regulations in the world. To do an animal experiment you first must have a licence which involves going on courses about animal welfare. Then you need to produce a detailed proposal saying what your experiment is trying to find out, stating why you need to use animals, the welfare steps you will take and also the minimum number to get reliable data. This then goes to a panel who decide if you can do the experiment. So there are a lot of steps to make sure that we are using the minimum number of animals for the experiments and that they are properly looked after!

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I’ve done animal research and while I don’t enjoy it, I do think it’s necessary. A lot of what we know about how the body works, how we get sick, how we learn and how we grow has come from studying ‘model systems’.

      Some of these systems are little organisms, like yeast, fruit flies, nematodes and zebrafish. These are more basic forms of life that we study because they’re easier to understand. Just like how in a math problem you swap in variables to simplify it, scientists ask basic questions in simple organisms then move on to more complex systems as their understanding grows.

      It would be great if we didn’t need to use living things to study how we live and why we die, but unfortunately there’s currently no other option that’s sufficient.

      When we use animals for research, it’s done under very strict regulations. You have to fill out gobs and gobs of forms about what the experiment is, what data it will produce and why it’s absolutely necessary to use animals and not another method. Then all that paperwork goes to a committee that scrutinizes your information to make sure that the experiment is worth the life of an animal and they can tell you how to work to make the animals as comfortable as possible and use as few as possible. It is not something that is taken lightly at all.

      There are many situations where the committee says no, and many many people who check in on the animals to make sure that they are safe and healthy. People who work closely with animals, especially mammals like mice and rabbits and primates are very caring and respectful of the animals’ wellbeing.

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I like animals, but I like people more, so I think that, if I had to be absolutely honest, I would say that I am OK with medical testing that helps cure diseases etc., but I’m totally against cosmetic testing. I hope that one day we will not need to test drugs on animals at all, but from what I know at the moment (as a non-biologist), this remains the best way to improve treatments and develop new medicines etc.

      It’s a very interesting “moral and ethical” debate – people get very upset about tests on dogs for example, but what if scientists came up with a way to test drugs on slugs or spiders for example, and these turned out to be just as good as testing on dogs – how many people would then object to testing medicines on spiders? I suspect not as many as object to testing on dogs – but slugs and spiders are animals too (I think?!).

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      hurting animals to test make-up and things like that cannot be justified.

      When it comes to medicine it is harder. I don’t want people *or* animals to suffer horrible illnesses, but I feel more empathy for people.

      If someone I loved had cancer and I knew that the only way to help them was to cause an animal suffering, I would do it. It’s horrible, though, and I am very glad I don’t have to make those choices. Some other poor person has to make them for me..

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I think it has been, and still is, a sad necessary part of essential research like developing new drugs and medical treatments. What I certainly don’t approved of is its use in testing things like make up. I hope scientists in the field will continue to look for alternatives so that one day animal testing is outdated and there are far better, less ethically questionable ways of getting much needed results.

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