• Question: Do you approve the use of animals in drug testing?

    Asked by sllewellynsmith to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 18 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by amarmalhotra, gracieg123, bentate.
    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      We have to think of the pros and cons of this issue. We have to make sure that drugs are totally safe for people to use and are going to be effective. But before we know that, we have to do tests. Testing on animals can give us some indication of how the drug works and where it acts in the body. Sometimes this information is not very useful as some drugs act quite differently in different animals.

      But do we want to test all these drugs on humans straight away, without knowing what the effects might be? Would you volunteer to have drugs tested on you? I think it is better that we do some controlled tests on animals to get as much information as possible before we start to try things on humans.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      I think until we have better computer and cell-based models of how drugs interact with humans, then we need to use animal testing to make sure drugs are safe in the initial tests so that we aren’t giving completely toxic things to humans. Hopefully we’ll develop better systems for testing and we won’t have to use animals for much longer.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Yes, I think that animal testing is an essential part of medical drug trials. Every medicine out there has to go through lots and lots of tests before it can be sold. You can’t sell a drug to people when you don’t know what effect it will have. Maybe it will kill them! You need to know how much to give them, when they should take the drug, what food or drink they should avoid when on the drug.

      So why not test the drug on humans instead of animals? Well, a lot of people would lose their lives this way, and volunteers would start disappearing pretty quickly! Once it’s certain that the drug doesn’t kill animals we can be confident it won’t kill humans. There’s still loads of testing on humans to be done afterwards. But it’s a lot safer (less deadly!) than just rushing straight in and using humans straight away.

      Most animal testing is done on rodents and fruit flies but other animals are also used. It’s not nice to think of animals dying in a laboratory, but it’s better than the alternatives of testing on humans straight away or not developing new treatments.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Yes – at the moment it’s one of the best ways we have of measuring if a drug is going to be safe. I don’t like the idea of animals suffering to help make medicines, but I like the idea of people suffering even less! Many organisations have signed up to help investigate the 3 Rs – which stands for “replace, reduce and refine laboratory animal experimentation wherever possible”

      If it’s something that you find interesting, there’s an online course that gives you more information: http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/HumaneScience/coursePage/index/

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      In drug testing, yes. We learn a lot of important things about drugs from testing on animals. And almost all drug and medicinal achievements rely on the use of animals in some way. In these instances, I think that animal testing is justified.

      Aside from drug testing, animals are being used for all sorts of other experiments. For example, cosmetics and biotechnology fields (have you seen the remote control rat? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-jTkqHSWlg). Personally in these instances, I don’t agree it is necessary to use animals. Luckily though, the UK has banned animal testing for cosmetic purposes! Yay!

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