• Question: do you think anilmal testing is wrong, even for scienctific research?

    Asked by cerys to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by howwilst1, ejrw.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      ‘Animal testing’ is quite a broad statement. Some animal testing doesn’t do any harm to the animal and we get a lot from it.

      Yes, a lot of animal testing isn’t very nice for the animal, but this is one of those places where I think the greater good is more important here. I don’t really believe that things like cosmetics should be tested on animals, but testing drugs that might save human lives are going to have a far greater impact that whatever might happen to the animal.

      This is definitely one of those things that there’s no ‘right’ answer. But I definitely believe that people should get violent (against either side) as has happened in some cases.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      This is a big problem for scientists to overcome. Nobody likes the idea of hurting animals for any reason, but to check if drugs and things are safe for humans, animals are the best comparison to people, and most scientists would prefer to test a drug on an animal than on a person.

      Did you hear the news today that no airlines or ferries will transport animals for testing anymore, because they keep being attacked by animal rights campaigners. That means that scientists in the UK can’t get hold of the animals they need for tests, so they will have to come up with another way of testing, or we will not be able to do good enough research. Maybe we will be able to come up with a way of testing drugs that doesn’t involve animals or people, and that would a relief for everyone!

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I think that animal testing is really important for the development of new drugs and treatments. If you want to do animal testing you have to have special licences and you get inspected regularly to make sure that the animals are being looked after properly, so there are lots of things in place to protect the animals that are used.
      If there were alternatives it would be better not to have to use animals, but at the moment there is no other way to test new drugs.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      That’s a really tricky question. I saw it was on the news last night about transport companies being persuaded by animal right activitists to refuse to carry animals for lab testing. They had a scientist on that who was quite good at explaining why animals are sometimes needed. She said that they couldn’t develop possibly life saving drugs without some form of animal testing. So that seems really important, and if it really boiled down to it I would rather save a human life than an animal…..

      But animal testing in less important circumstances (like for cosmetics) seems completely wrong to me and I would never buy cosmetics which have been tested on animals.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      No, because we need to use animals to test certain chemicals to find out if they have an affect on humans, the good example being drugs.

      And don’t forget that we experiment on animals to help test medicines for other animals: we might make some suffer, but it would save a lot more. A good example is the Badger TB vaccine: a lot of farmers want to shoot badgers to stop TB spreading to their cows, but the good news is that a vaccine has been developed which means we (might) instead be able to treat the badgers and stop the TB using medicine.

Comments