• Question: How many animals have you tested on?

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

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi cookieman,
      I don’t work on animals as I only use human material. If you count humans as animals, then I have worked on thousands of different humans!!!

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      hundreds.. although it may seem cruel, it is the only way for us to find out whether drugs work and whether they are safe to give to humans. We do everything we can to make sure they do not suffer. In my research, I put them to sleep before operating on them and give them a strong painkiller so when they wake up, they don’t feel a thing. The advantage of using mice is that they have a very similar DNA makeup to us, so if a drug works in mice, I can be confident it will probably work in humans as well.

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi, I don’t work in the lab so I haven’t done any proper experiments on animals. When I was a uni though we did have to do dissection a couple of times using mice, but that is the only time I’ve used animals in the lab. Animal experiments are really useful though because they allow us to do tests that we never could on humans, and to get a stem cell therapy approved you have to do animals experiments to prove it is safe before it can be tested on human volunteers – it’s the law.
      What do you think about animal experiments?

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      i have worked with zebrafish and with mice, both facinating animals that I have really enjoyed learning about

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