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Asked by anon-213140 to carolwallace, Christian, Fern, Hannah, Imad, Robert on 10 Jun 2019. This question was also asked by anon-213825.
Question: what do you think about testing animals
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Robert Ives answered on 10 Jun 2019:
It is unfortunate that we need to test on animals, but I do believe it is the right thing to do at the moment. There are thousands of diseases that can make humans and other animals very sick, cause a great amount of pain and even kill us. We need ways to stop ourselves getting ill and to help us get better if we do get ill. We use ‘good drugs’ (medicines) to help us do this. When scientists begin to make new medicines, most of these will not work and most will be poisonous to us so we have to test these medicines to make sure they are safe. One very important part of testing medicines needs them to go into a living animal. We choose to use non human animals as we don’t want to harm a person who might be somebodies family or friend. Once we know a medicine is safe in animals, we then test it in some healthy humans before giving it to patients.
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Imad Ouachan answered on 10 Jun 2019:
I think testing on animals is a tough ethical issue that could be argued either way. The developments of medicines are key to us ( both humans and animals) living longer and heather lives. Many medicines we think may work end up to be dangerous meaning that it may hurt people that take it. The closest thing we have to knowing how it would affect people sometimes is to use it on animals and see how it affects them before moving onto human testing.
My view is if there is an alternative that avoid animals altogether that would be ideal. But in many cases this is not possible and the most important thing is making sure that any suffering is minimised and that everything is as humane as possible.
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Fern Johnson answered on 11 Jun 2019:
I’m an animal lover, but I think testing medicines on animals is necessary to help make sure they are safe for people. I don’t think animal cosmetic testing is justifiable, there’s a big difference between making a new type of shampoo and a drug that might treat a terrible illness. There are some alternatives available, such as just testing on animal cells rather than a whole animal, but it just isn’t the same as giving a drug to a living organism.
There is a bigger problem in drug testing – very few drugs end up being used and passing all the safety (it doesn’t harm you) and efficacy (does it work, is it better than another drug) tests. This costs a lot of money and time, and is why new drugs are so expensive – they have to pay for the failures. This also means that the animals have been tested on, even though the drug doesn’t get used. Hopefully in the future scientists will be able to identify drugs that are likely to pass all the tests before they start, so less time, money and animals are wasted.
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Carol Wallace answered on 11 Jun 2019:
When we bring new drugs on to the market, we need to be sure that they’re safe for us and sadly the first trials are usually done with animals.
There is a big campaign to minimise the animal usage by using cell lines, reducing the number of animals used and other methods.
In the UK animal research is incredible well regulated with the health of the animals coming very high and there are lots of ethical questions asked before you can even use animals.
sadly though, sometimes there is no option and we do need to use them, but we use much less than in the past and they often lead happy lives.
Comments
Christian commented on :
I believe animal testing is a necessity for some parts of science. I personally never wanted to do it, so I started working with plants and then, later, bacteria. But that is only my personal choice based on my own boundaries of what I feel comfortable with.
It’s an ethical question if we, as human beings, should be treating other animals as objects to experiment on for our own benefit. I feel somewhat conflicted answering this question for myself, so I decided to avoid working with animals. Then again, empathy with animals is a concept that came up during the 19th century and animal rights practically didn’t exist before.
My opinion is that testing on animals is ethical, but only under certain circumstances:
1. No other testing method is available (Liquid cell cultures or organoids for example)*
2. Not testing a medicine would result in a significant risk for humans
3. What we are testing isn’t something trivial such as cosmetics.
So, if it’s something important, such as medicines and could be harmful when tested on humans and there is no other reliable method… then yes, I think we should test it on animals.
*Cell cultures are not necessarily more animal-friendly. To grow cells, a lot of labs use FCS (fetal calf serum) which is produced from animals. The production conditions are probably not better than just using live mice.
Christian commented on :
So to add to your question to Rob, I think in his particular case no other method would yield a reliable result and the outcome is important because it may be harmful to children if they don’t reliably take their medicines. Sometimes animal tests are all we got.
Robert commented on :
Part of my current role is to investigate potential alternatives to animal testing – this is an area I’m passionate about. It is very hard to find replacement models that actually work, but some do and we have been able to reduce or remove use of animals for certain tests. It would be great if we could come up with some really tests that could be used in early Chemistry as this could reduce safety tests (meaning less animals used) save money (meaning cheaper medicines) and reduce the amount of time it takes to make a new medicine (saving lives quicker). Let’s all hope