• Question: If you had to, would you go through with hurting an animal just to find out how the body works, or would you just leave it until it eventually falls to its death?

    Asked by 624evnb35 to Adam, Emily, Thad, Thomas on 12 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Emily Seward

      Emily Seward answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Luckily the work I do means I don’t have to make this choice. I think that it is better to work without having to kill animals but sometimes it is unavoidable.

    • Photo: Thomas Clements

      Thomas Clements answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      All through history we have had to dissect animals and humans to understand how they work. This is really important because if we understand how things work then we can treat diseases or problems much much easier.

      But that doesn’t mean we have to kill something to understand it. We can use already dead things – this is why there were so many famous grave robbers in the 1700 and 1800 because so many surgeons wanted bodies to practice on that it was quite profitable to illegal dig up graves and sell the bodies.

      Other than the grave robbing, this hasn’t changed. I have a plastic card in my wallet that says medical science can have my body if I die so they can use me and my organs for good. I won’t need them any more 🙂

    • Photo: Thaddeus Aid

      Thaddeus Aid answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hi,

      I would never hurt an animal if I could avoid it, thankfully my work only requires a blood test from my human volunteers. But there is more to this question than just that. The study of animals has helped us to understand ourselves and helped us to produce medicines. This is important and needs to continue. However, I think that all animals that are being studied must be treated very well, they must not suffer, and they must have the ability to run around and play. I certainly don’t think animals should be used by businesses to test their products (like make-up or hairspray) but I know that many humans would die if we stopped researching animals.

      Fortunately, technology is advancing so that animal tests are becoming less and less necessary, instead of doing early “trials” in animals we can test new medicines against lab grown cells or simulate tests in a computer. This allows us to save many animals that in the past would have died to keep us healthy. I think that we need to continue to improve our technology so that we can absolutely minimise the number of animals that need to be studied and so that animals can lead the lives that they deserve, to be happy and free.

      I hope that answers your question!

    • Photo: Adam Milligan

      Adam Milligan answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      This is a really important question and there is a whole field of study called ‘ethics’ that asks these questions a lot!

      My work involves studying animal behaviour – and dead animals don’t really do much so I don’t work with them – but I know people who have to hurt (or even kill) some animals for their work. This sounds really sad, and is not something I want to do at all, but if your work hurts only one animal but the results from your work can make 100s of animals (or more) better then maybe it is more ok?!

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