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Asked by mizzyfattz to Anna, Chris, Jane, Iain, Nick on 7 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by keanamiller, megan88815, shania000000.
Question: why do scientist experiment on most animals ?isn't that wrong ?
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Nick Goldman answered on 7 Mar 2014:
It’s important to remember that lots of scientists don’t do any experiments on animals at all. Only a few do animal experiments, and they are all careful to use as few of these experiments as possible, and to make them as painless as possible.
But there are some things that we can only learn about by doing experiments using animals. The scientists who do that have decided that the good they can do for humans or for other animals is more important than the harm of the experiment. It’s a difficult decision to make, just like deciding if you want to be a vegetarian or wear leather shoes.
I don’t think there’s a right answer about this. I think we should make our own minds up, and respect other people who have made their own decisions.
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Jane Charlesworth answered on 7 Mar 2014:
As Nick said, a lot of scientists don’t use animals in experiments at all. I know personally that I wouldn’t feel comfortable with doing animal experiments, but I also know that colleagues who do try to use as few animals as possible and have to show that they can’t do the same in experiment without using animals.
In fact one of my friends does experiments on rats and the changes that happen in their brains because of stress. She is vegetarian and cares about animal rights, but she chose to do animal research in the hope that by experimenting on (and killing) a few rats, her work will improve the lives of lots of other animals by showing that animal and human brains are more similar then people think. I found that a very interesting take on this question!
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Anna Middleton answered on 7 Mar 2014:
@mizzyfattz @keanamiller Personally I disagree with animal testing for things like makeup and stuff that isn’t serious. But for medicines I would rather they were tested on animals in the first instance than people. My opinion on this has really changed since working in genetics, I used to be anti all animal testing, but now I can see how important it is to understand how new medications work, there is often no way to avoid the animal tests to work out if the medicine is safe or not.
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Chris Cole answered on 8 Mar 2014:
That’s a very important question. Thank you for asking it.
There are several points to remember, the vast majority of science is not involved with any type of animal testing. Animal testing is very tightly controlled by the UK government (strictest in the world), all people doing animal testing have to have a licence to do it and every time you design an experiment with animals you have ensure that any suffering is kept to a minimum and must not be unnecessary.
With all this in mind, I have no problem with animal testing as without it we wouldn’t have safe and effective medicines nor would we be able to make important discoveries about human diseases or biology in general.
You can find out more here:
http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk -
Iain Moal answered on 10 Mar 2014:
This is a great question, but I don’t think I can really much more than what the others have already said. Animal testing is avoided whenever possible, but sometimes it has to be done, and at these times scientists must make sure that it is essential and that minimal suffering is involved. In my mind, there is no doubt that much greater animal suffering is inflicted by the food industry, which keep millions of animal in horrific conditions before butchering.
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