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Asked by to Nimesh, Amy, Anita, Daryl, Sandra on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by , , , , .
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Sandra Chiwanza answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Hi,
Good question.I think it is a necessary tool for the advancement of medicine, particularly in understanding how new drugs affect the whole body as a system instead of just the targeted area for cure. It is also essential how faulty genes work and function for genetic diseases and cancers. This lead to better, more effective cures with minimal side-effects in human beings
However, this should be done responsibly and where I used to work, we were aiming to reduce the number of animals in our laboratory and replacing them with what we call cell culture based systems. That is, we use modified cells-human ones and animal-based cells grown in nutrinent medium to do testing of certain drugs.
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Daryl Jones answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Animal testing is very important to our research. It’s important because we need to develop drugs to cure diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. Without animals in research, we would not be able to know if our drugs work in living animals, and we would not be able to work out if they drugs will harm humans. So, animal testing is very important. It is also very important however for researchers to make sure their animals are not suffering!! We always make sure our rats and mice are happy 🙂
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Amy Monaghan answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Hi Creodos & Hattiewiggins
This is a really good question. At the university we sometimes have people complaining about animal testing and we have to be very careful that the animals are kept safe. People don’t realise that some of these animals will become very ill if they are not cared for properly by trained scientists!
Although no scientists like experimenting on animals, without them we wouldn’t know how a lot of diseases happened, or have a clue how to even start finding drugs to treat them. Also we have to be able to check that drugs are safe to use before we give them to humans.
Lots of research goes on to help find new alternative ways that we can test medicines and examine the mechanisms of disease – my cell experiments are one way of doing this. But if we stopped using animals tomorrow there would never be any new medicines again. These animals are the real heroes of drug discovery!
Amy
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Anita Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2014:
Dear Creodos,
I can’t believe that people ask a Microbiologist about animal testing!! Strange!
Anyway, lets talk about the cruelty of drug testing on animals (I assume that this is what you mean). Most countries in the world have very strict rules and regulations about what is permitted in Scientific experiments, and what is not (I’m not talking about the cosmetic industry etc). The UK possibly has more strict rules than many others. Before anybody begins an experiment using animals, they need to undergo a lot of training. Even then, they cannot start – a plan of their work has to go before an Ethics Board, then the Home Office. These boards and Inspectors must approve the plan before any work can start. The experimenter has an obligation to REDUCE the number of animals used, REFINE each experiment (so that the extent of use is minimised) and REPLACE animals in whatever way is possible (eg using computers, cells, ‘lower’ organisms (I hate this term) etc). This is called the 3Rs, and is the major cornerstone of in vivo (live) research.
Each university has a veterinary officer and a staff member called a NACWO, who is the person who ‘speaks’ on behalf of the animals. These people continue to make sure that all of the animals are being treated properly. The Home Office Inspector also comes to each university to inspect what is going on.I don’t know of any Scientist who would want to be cruel to an animal. This is for 2 reasons – we’re not different from you – we don’t like cruelty! There is also a more pragmatic reason – an unhealthy, abused animal (and an animal that has been abused is an unhealthy animal) will probably not behave appropriately in our scientific tests! and thus our results will be invalid.
It’s a tricky area, thank you for asking your question.
Cheers,
Anita. -
Nimesh Mistry answered on 20 Jun 2014:
It’s necessary to create a new medicine. You can’t develop a new medicine and give it to humans before without knowing how safe it is likely to be. It’s sad but unavoidable if we’re ever to come up with new cures.
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