• Question: do you think it is important that other animals arn't harmed in your work

    Asked by elisabethrodger to Chris, Emily, Natalie on 17 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Natalie Stanford

      Natalie Stanford answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Yes and no. Whilst I don’t work with animals myself I do understand the necessity of studying on animals. A lot of our medication for treating illnesses and curing disease have been developed from animal studies. These are important parts of drug testing that help us understand whether the medications will work and not harm us when we take them. We have saved a lot of lives from these studies. The animals are well cared for before testing and they are treated as humanely as possible. In good pharmaceutical studies they are also only tested on when it is absolutely necessary.

      I am working on making computerized versions of cells, one day, with good enough computerized cells, we will be able to reduce certain aspects of animal testing for drugs and replace it with computer simulations instead.

      I don’t agree with testing for cosmetic reasons, however, I believe this is wrong.

    • Photo: Emily Cook

      Emily Cook answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Personally, I do. I am a huge animal lover and I don’t believe animals should be hurt to benefit humans. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think animals can’t be used in research, just that it has to be justified and the animals treated carefully.

      There was a case where a scanner was being tested for use with premature babies. The infants were seriously ill so couldn’t be used for repeated test scans and all equipment needs to be trialed before it can be used best, so piglets were used instead, as pigs are very similar to humans. They weren’t harmed by the process so in this case I think it can be justified. The ethics of animal testing and experimentation is a complicated one and not everyone agrees about what is acceptable and what isn’t. what do you think?

    • Photo: Chris Cooper

      Chris Cooper answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      This is a very interesting and important question. I could cop out and repeat a previous answer where I said that the only animals I use in my current research are the hearts and blood from cows that are anyway slaughtered by the meat industry for food. And this is indeed true for my current research at Essex.

      But I think there is a bigger picture here that is worth discussing in a serious way. When I think about this issue I always do it in the context of how humans have treated animals throughout history. Even activities that we might think today are not harmful, clearly involved harm in the past. All pets and domestic animals had to be caught and bred against their will. A wild horse or dog will not want to be tamed. Some domestic animals are clearly in-bred and in pain because of this. Extreme animal rights activists view keeping pets as slavery. I don’t go as far as this, but I am aware that I have complete control over my pet rabbits. They don’t have a choice in what they eat or where they roam. I feed them and they seem “happy”, but I can’t get into a rabbit’s head so I have no idea if this is harmful or not.

      It is also clear that none of the work that any biological scientists do today would have been possible without research on animals in the past – these studies underpin our knowledge of human and animal systems. In fact the whole of biological science from the earliest Victorian insect collectors to modern physiology is underpinned by knowledge based on animal research.

      So how does this relate to today? I know of no scientist who is indifferent to the pain of animals. I myself have received a general anesthetic before I had an operation in hospital. I felt no pain. In the past I have done the same to animals. I figure they also don’t suffer. This work resulted in a new treatment to prevent brain damage to newborn human infants so I think it was definitely worth it.

      In the vast majority of animal research by scientists the pain suffered is less than that felt by animals in the food industry. I know several vegetarians who are involved with animal studies. The regulations are far stricter in laboratory science than they are in the abbatoir. In fact the UK animal research regulations are probably the most rigorous in the world.

      So now we come to the difficult issue. There is no doubt that in a small subset of experiments animals appear to suffer pain. Now we can’t know how conscious they are or what their perception of pain is (is it different for a fruit fly or a rat or a human? I assume it must be, but how do you measure it scientifically?). So in those cases there should be, and indeed is, an analysis of the cost in animal suffering versus the reward in the knowledge gained (whether of a new scientific discovery or a toxicity test for a drug). The famous scientist Colin Blakemore (himself a victim of physical attacks by animal rights activists) described animal research as a “necessary evil”. Blakemore is outspoken in his support of the use of animal testing in medical research, though he has publicly denounced fox hunting and animal testing for cosmetics. I broadly agree with his sentiments.

      Thank you for sparking this important debate. I think it is important the public are involved with these discussions. Scientists take animal health very seriously.

      One final thing. Don’t be fooled into people telling you that you don’t need animals for research because we have cell culture and computer modelling. These are additional tools, not replacement ones. My research uses cell culture and computer modelling, but sometimes there is no replacement for looking at a brain if you need to study a brain. I use non-invasive tests on human brains if I can, but this is not always possible. Also if I finally make what I think is a blood substitute that can save people’s lives, I would refuse to let anyone test it on a person until it had been tested on a (fully anesthetized and unconscious) animal first.

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