• Question: hi, my question for u is do you experiment on animals? if so why? dont you think its cruel?

    Asked by cheese to David, James, Mike, Suze, Will on 13 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by kfox, gvarmor.
    • Photo: James Marrow

      James Marrow answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      No, I don’t experiment on animals. It’s not necessary for energy research.

      I do break defenseless bits of metal and ceramics, however.

    • Photo: Mike Dodd

      Mike Dodd answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hey Cheese and Kfox. Parts of my work involve animals. This is a difficult subject to answer, as scientists in the medical profession can feel scared to talk about it. I work with animals, because it is the only way to truly understand the heart. To help develop new drugs to treat heart conditions such as a heart attack or diabetes, there is a need for a small amount of animal research. All the research is carried out under very very strict guidelines, called the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. This act protects the animal and not the scientist, if you do something wrong, or cruel, then you will be locked in prison. It was designed to make sure that animal work is only used when it is absolutely necessary. I don’t feel particularly easy about working with animals, but I feel that done correctly it is the only way to improve medical science and human life. If you want to talk about this further, please leave a comment! Thanks

    • Photo: William Eborall

      William Eborall answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I don’t personally carry out experiments on animals, but I know people who do.

      To decide if it’s right to carry out experiments on animals I think we need to ask ourselves “have I ever taken any form of medicine or had an operation?” If the answer to that question is yes then I’m afraid you’ve benefited from an experiment on an animal. Unfortunately there isn’t yet any other reliable way of finding out what a medicine (or an operation) will do to a person without first having tried it on an animal.

    • Photo: Suze Kundu

      Suze Kundu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I don’t experiment on animals! I know that there is a place for that in some fields of science, but I’m just the kind of person that would get too emotional and would free all of the lab animals, given half a chance! My friend Jess does some tests on animals for her PhD in pain therapy, and while it is hard on the animals, it is unfortunately a necessary step in the medical testing process. We try not to talk about it though!

    • Photo: David Ingram

      David Ingram answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Some of my colleagues work on the impact of marine energy extraction on seals, dolphin, wales and fish. They don’t experiment on the animals but observe them and some seals have been radio tagged so they can be followed. One of the equimar films http://www.youtube.com/user/EquimarVid?gl=GB&hl=en-GB#p/a/u/2/_F6ogns80Ls will show you more

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