• Question: Do you hurt the animals during your experiments or do they remain unharmed?

    Asked by anon-208644 to Titus, Tori, Stuart, Hannah, Gill, Alessandro on 12 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-208647, anon-208896.
    • Photo: Tori Blakeman

      Tori Blakeman answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      Hi Ellie, I don’t work directly with animals, but I have friends that do and they are treated SO well! They are never put under unnecessary harm, however of course sometimes scientists have to infect animal models (commonly mice) with diseases to check that drugs work.

      We have to remember that animal models are hugely important to test that medicines are safe before we use them in humans. By using animals we can save the lives of so many humans. This is a classic ethical issue in biology – if you go to university you can take a module on ‘bioethics’ to learn about animal research in more detail.

      Check out this tour from the University of Manchester to see more: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/environment/governance/ethics/animals/virtual-tour/

      Read more about the UK government’s policies on animal research here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/research-and-testing-using-animals

    • Photo: Gill Harrison

      Gill Harrison answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      I don’t use animals in experiments.

      One of my students many years ago did research on dogs at a veterinary hospital, so they were dogs that were ill and needed a scan … So she was helping them to get better in the same way that we do research non humans in hospitals.

      I did some scanning on animals this weekend and it was so lovely, I think they enjoyed the pampering 😊

    • Photo: Stuart Higgins

      Stuart Higgins answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      I don’t use animals directly in my experiments, but I do work with people who do. Like Tori said, every time we do an experiment with animals we have to think very carefully about it, and whether it is the best choice, or whether we could do the experiment another way without an animal. A lot of scientists work on trying to find ways to not use animals, and if we never had to, that would be great. But for some things, like testing new medicines, I think it’s important we understand as much as we can about how safe they are before putting them into humans.
      This is an ethical choice (thinking that it’s ok to use animals because it will help humans), and not all scientists I work with agree. There’s more information about different sides to this argument on the BBC website.

      BBC Animal ethics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml

    • Photo: Hannah Dalgleish

      Hannah Dalgleish answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      I don’t look at animals either (no animals found in space yet the last time I checked!)

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