• Question: why do yous use animals to experiment on? would yous not class this as animal abuse? i love animals and i personally think this wrong whats your opinion?

    Asked by anon-181747 on 11 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 11 Jun 2018:


      This is an incredibly difficult topic for me, as I hate animal abuse and animal testing, but this is where the ‘sad but true’ aspects come in. There ethical bodies that you have to write to in order to gain approval for any study, and experimenting on people is a) difficult to get approval for, b) expensive, and c) risky. I, personally, think Psychology and Medicine would progress a lot faster if we could solely work on people because animal brains are not completely identical to human brains, and our bodies work differently. However, we simply (at the moment) would not be able to achieve what we have ‘in the name of science’ without the use of animals. Some people may agree or disagree, and feel free – I love discussions. At the end of the day, just because some aspects of science requires animal testing, others do not. It is possible to go through your career without having to harm an animal – and you can live your life in a way that reflects that. Eventually, I hope we will be in a place to completely cut out animal testing, but at the moment, we are not at that point. If it is something you are passionate about, there are things you can do now (like cut out cosmetics – they are horrific to animals, and just for vanity rather than to help people, or only buy cosmetics that are free from animal testing), and if you were to go into science, you can fight against animal testing by practising research that is free from it. Maybe, if lots of people did this, we would be able to phase out animal testing – at least I like to think so 🙂

    • Photo: Jason Chu

      Jason Chu answered on 11 Jun 2018:


      This is a very good question and topic to bring up.
      Research with animals is necessary at the moment. It has and continues to enable us to make life-saving discoveries. Everything from insulin for diabetics or novel drugs for cancer patients.
      This is because any experiment we do with cells might be informative, but not reflect the same result when we test this in humans. And we don’t want to risk untested science on humans and potentially lead to harm to people.
      Also, I would personally not class it as animal abuse. We have major regulations and rules set up so that we look after animals to the best of our abilities and ensure that the science we conduct is good science. And if alternatives can be done – using cells, or computational models. They are prioritised first!
      Moreover, the world of science is becoming more and more transparent so that the public know what kind of animal research is being done.
      However, I can totally understand that it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. Just know that a lot of important research and discoveries have been made possible because of animals.

    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 12 Jun 2018:


      The answers given have been good.
      I will add that I don’t personally use animals in my current work – though I have in the past and I may well in the future.
      >
      However – the work I look at involves drugs in humans – and these have all been tested on animals first.
      It is worth remembering that pretty much every medicine thats ever been made has been tested on animals
      >
      I will add, however, that most scientists I know don’t like animal testing, but recognise its current necessity. Most people would do away with it if we could.
      >
      I will also add that I was recently at a meeting where the main medicines regulatory body for the UK (MHRA) were present. There was a talk from the guy who was fairly top in regulatory animal experiments for medicines – and he made it quite clear they are trying to minimise animal experiments and use them only when necessary.
      >
      You can never condone testing on other things like hair products – and as our other models get better we will see less and less animal testing. I hope one day we won’t see it at all.

    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 13 Jun 2018:


      We use animals to do research because there aren’t working alternatives. In the UK animal research is incredibly tightly regulated – you have to sit exams to be able to do anything; there are regular surprise inspections of facilities; and every animal has to be accounted for at the end of each year – scientists have to justify everything they’ve done, and every effort made to minimise suffering. In fact, you’re right – if you don’t have the correct license, and if you fail inspections/don’t do the paperwork right/do anything you don’t have specific permission to do (e.g. taking more blood from an animal than you are allowed to) then you can go to jail because it is then classed as animal abuse. The way the law works is that scientists and researchers get an exemption for work they can justify. My name is on the cages of my mouse colony – I’m responsible for their welfare, and it’s something I and everyone who works with animals takes very seriously. Here’s a tour of the facility I work in so you can see how high tech it is to make sure the animals have the best care: http://www.labanimaltour.org/harwell

      A lot of these animals, especially mice, don’t have “experiments” as such done to them – I think people often think of animals under anaesthetic having horrible things done to them, and this isn’t really what we mean by animal research. Instead, researchers take tissue after the animal has been put down in a humane manner, and use the tissues to do experiments. For example, to study genes involved in Alzheimer’s, you need to look at the brain. But we want to look at the brain whilst the disease is progressing, so we can work out how to fix it – not when the disease has destroyed the brain. And taking brain biopsies from patients is not a good idea – we wouldn’t really get any volunteers, it would be very damaging. Very few people donate their tissues to research when they die, so there’s just not much tissue to go round, and it’s normally not in good condition by this point (I mean, the person died). So instead, you take the gene you think causes/is involved in Alzheimer’s (for example), and delete it in a mouse. You then breed up the mouse so you have lots of mice (and brains), then you can put down the mice humanely, take the brain tissue and examine it for changes in all sorts of things. Some of those things might be areas we could try and treat with drugs. This is getting to be a long answer (sorry!) but I got into writing it and thought it would illustrate well why we sometimes don’t really have an alternative.

      Basically, I don’t like doing animal research. I don’t think anyone does, and if you do like it maybe you have issues. And I don’t think I could work with anything larger or more intelligent than a mouse. But I do think it’s necessary, and personally I will probably always prioritise sick children/adults over animals, even though I completely agree that we should avoid suffering, reduce the use of animals, and avoid the use of animals wherever possible.

Comments