• Question: do you use animals in your work ??

    Asked by fazwilliams to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 16 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 13 Mar 2011:

      thanks for your message,

      I use human eggs embryos and cells in my work, so I guess we are animals too!! The stem cells that I make, are useful to use instead of animals in some experiments, but not all.
      I don’t use any other animals, but I think that animal experiments are important in medical research. All new drugs and treatments need to be tested on animals first. I think that as long as the animals are treated with respect and it is really necessary that the experiments are carried out, then it is an essential part of research.

      What do you think about animal experimentation. Do you agree with it?

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 13 Mar 2011:

      Hi Faz

      I work with mice, it’s the 1st time I’ve worked with animals and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it but I really enjoy it. I really care about them and they are essential to my work so I do whatever I can to keep them as happy as possible. One day we may not need animals in research if we work out how other models e.g. Computational models or using organ cultures can accurately predict the effects of drugs but most often we are still working out HOW things goes wrong before we are able to then work out how they might be fixed, so our mice are very very important to us. it’s so important though that they are happy and healthy and not stressed in order that our results are accurate.

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      No, I don’t work in the lab at all so no animal work for me. I’m not purely against it though, as long as it’s done appropriately it is a very much needed part of research.

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi Faz,

      Yes, I do use mice in my work. In fact, I had some concerns about this, especially when I first started out, because I thought this was a bit cruel.

      But what I think persuaded me is that you have to remember why we are doing this. We are hoping to help the thousands and millions of people around the world to be able to walk or work again. There are many people whose bones do not heal properly and may need to have the limbs chopped off or have limbs that are forever painful. So I think it’s a worthwhile project. the reason we test this on animals is because we need to try out our drugs and chemicals otherwise we’d be giving them to real people without really knowing what they’d do! They may be make the patient sicker, for all we know! The reason we use mice is because their genetic makeup is very similar to ours and so if our drugs work in them, we can be pretty confident they’d work in humans too.

      Also, we make every effort to make sure the mice do NOT suffer! They do not actually feel any pain when I do the operation. I put them to sleep first, like I would to a normal person undergoing an operation, so that they wouldn’t feel a thing. Then I do the operation. I actually fix the broken bones so this takes away a lot of the pain, and then I give them a really strong pain killer in the nerve so that when they wake up, they do not feel any pain at all, and I can tell this because I can do different tests to make sure they are comfortable and in fact, they run around straight away when they wake up. If they were in pain, they normally just sit around and not want to disturb the broken leg. so we are not that cruel. The government has a whole load of rules to make sure we are kind to the animals otherwise we could be thrown into jail! So we have to make sure we treat them with respect. I know it may still seem cruel, but I think it’s important that we know what we’re doing before we do things on humans! I wouldn’t like my relatives, for instance, to have untested drugs used on them… what do you reckon?

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