• Question: Are you against testing animals ?

    Asked by luk3jam3s to Darren, Cathal, Daphne, Jon, Katherine on 13 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by travisblundell, jo3b0yh0ward, mario789, thailaandmilly8w.
    • Photo: Katherine Haxton

      Katherine Haxton answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      This is a really complicated questions. My answer is Yes and No!

      For testing things like new medicines and working out how diseases work, animal testing is the only way we currently have to do those experiments. New medicines cannot be made and given to people without animal testing.

      We need to be really careful as scientists that any animal testing is done properly, without hurting the animals, and only when it is really really necessary.

      I am against animal testing for things like cosmetics and the like. It is simply unnecessary and there are better ways of dealing with those kinds of products. I am also against animal testing where it causes the animals unnecessary harm or suffering, particularly when there are other ways the experiments could be designed.

      So, yes, complicated! I hope that in the near future, we’ll come up with a better way to test new medicines so that we can stop animal testing altogether.

    • Photo: Darren Logan

      Darren Logan answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I’m not against it on principle, but I do think its very important to have tight rules and restrictions on how and why we use animals in experiments, and also on how they are looked after.

      Like Katherine says, I don’t support testing of cosmetics but I do agree with using animals to do experiments on understanding the brain and other complex organs. There is currently no other methods of learing how these organs work, or developing drugs against their diseases such as Alzheimers.

      Hopefully one day we will be able to model these things on computers, but that is not currently possible.

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