• Question: all- have you ever done any experiments that harm animals?

    Asked by Alex to Andy, Chris, Harriet, Jess, Nikki on 9 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Christopher Blanford

      Christopher Blanford answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Hi Alex
      Yes. I’m afraid so. We can’t get medicines into people without trying them on animals first.
      There’s a lot of money going into finding replacements for animals in research. If you’re interested, check out: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/
      Chris

    • Photo: andy chapman

      andy chapman answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Fortunately for me this is not my area. I can avoid making this choice doing the type of science I do but I support aspects of it: as Chris says, for medicines (not lipsticks or eyeliner)

    • Photo: Nikki D'Arcy

      Nikki D'Arcy answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Hi, Alex

      I don’t personally work with animals but as Chris said, unfortunately when we test drugs or vaccines they have to be tested on animals first. No one likes doing it and everyone tries very hard to avoid it or minimise the amount of animals used. Hopefully in the future we will be able to find a way to avoid it.

    • Photo: Harriet Reid

      Harriet Reid answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Hi Alex,
      I’ve never done any experiments that harm animals but some of my research will be tested on animals eventually. Researchers try really hard to minimise the use of animals in there science and any harm done to them. But in oder to make new medicines we have to test them on animals. Hopefully in the future we won’t have to use animals as much, new computer programs and non animal experiments will be better able to predict what would happen in a humans. Right now we have to use animal experiments to minimise human suffering.

      I am totally against using animals for testing cosmetics (e.g. lipsticks, eyeliner ext) the UK is putting in place laws to ban animals in this sort of testing.

    • Photo: Jessica Groppi

      Jessica Groppi answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      Hi,

      the kind of chemistry I work on doesn’t involve harming animals.

      Jess.

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