• Question: Have you ever done any research on animals?

    Asked by anna13 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 9 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Mariana Campos

      Mariana Campos answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      Hello Anna,
      I do research on animals now. I work with fruit flies. I believe you asked this because of all the controversy about animal testing. Although flies are usually not in the spotlight of this discussion I believe animal research is very important. They are very similar to us and is the only way to answer most of scientific and medical questions. Of course we try other methods if possible, we always try to use the least amount of animals and we make sure they don’t suffer. Only because of them we can have all the range of medicines we have right now.

    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      Anna,

      I mostly work on amoebas. And computers. I don’t fancy working on animals much (and as it happens I’m just trying to get a grant from 3R’s – a charity that gives money to avoid animals in research).

      But I’m not squeamish. I love sausages. And I have three kids, who are thank God healthy. But if I look at them and imagine they might be sick in the future, and ask would I do more work on mice to save them, the answer is a resounding “yes”.

      If I wanted to make life better for animals, I’d probably stop eating the sausages before blocking animal research into, say, cancer.

      Do you agree?

      (PS: I am also glad the UK banned animal testing for things like make-up…)

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      Hi Anna,
      For my project a bit of research is done on mice. It is not me, personally, who is working with the mice, because I do not have the licence for it. That’s why the actual experiments are performed by my supervisor. Just as Mariana said: I, too, think that we can’t get around animal research if we want to answer certain questions. But I think scientists should show their respect for the animals in that they do not let them suffer unnecessarily. This means that experiments must be well-planned and the mice should be taken care of during the experiment. Sometimes scientists do not treat the mice with this respect. It can happen that an experiment turns out afterwards to be meaningless because it was ill-prepared. Or that mice suffer more than necessary because the scientist is sloppy in handling the mice. I think it is important to avoid this and fortunately, it does not happen very often.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      I’ve never done any work on live animals myself but I have used parts of mice that were killed by someone else as part of their experiment. I didn’t really enjoy it to be honest but sometimes it has to be done.

      In my lab we use a bacterium called Salmonella typhimurium and its name comes from the fact that it causes a nasty disease called typhoid fever in mice (the murium bit of the name means mouse). Typhoid fever is also a nasty disease in humans – causing more than 21 million illnesses each year and killing 200,000 people, but we cannot really do research to find new cures to save people without doing some research using mice. I wouldn’t want to do it myself, because I really like small furry creatures (I have a hamster at home) but I am pleased that other people are brave enough to do it when it needs to be done. Absolutely nobody that I know does it lightly – animal welfare is extremely important and everyone takes steps to ensure that animals don’t suffer, but at the moment there is no real alternative. Hopefully that will change in the future because many people are trying to find new ways to reduce the use of animals in research. In fact, in my lab we now use a worm model instead. That might sound strange but the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans for short!) has a gut and a basic immune system (but no brain…) so we can use it for some of our experiments, but even then we only do the experiments we think are absolutely necessary.

Comments

  • Photo: anna13

    anna13 commented on :

    Thank you for your replys they’re really interesting. To Robert yes i agree that animals shouldn’t be used in experiments.

  • Photo: Robert

    Robert commented on :

    Anna13 – sorry, I didn’t remember your name so I didn’t realise the person in the chat was the same as the person in this question. Excuse me repeating myself.

    I think if you want to make animals’ lives happier, I would campaign against battery chickens and pigs first (because I think they have a horrible time and there’s no need for it, apart from to save someone a bit of money). If you believe animals’ lives are worth the same as peoples’, then animal research is a no-no, but as long as the supermarkets are full of meat that’s been unethically farmed, I don’t think it would be my first target.