Question: I understand that you experiment on animals, do you not consider this cruel?

James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

Hi ellie, you are right, experimenting on animals can be cruel if you don’t treat them well. But I think it’s also important to remember why we are doing this. We are hoping to find cures to help the thousands and millions of people around the world with diseases. And of course we need to test these drugs out on something before giving them to humans.

I experiment on mice by performing operations on them, but there are strict rules about keeping them pain free. I put these mice to sleep like you would do to a human for an operation. Then I do the surgery on them and before they wake up, give them a strong painkiller. When they wake up, they are scurrying around and do not feel any pain at all.

I was nervous to start with because, like you, I thought this was all a bit cruel, but when I saw that this procedure is really safe and that the mice do not experience pain from this, and when we found a potential drug to speed up healing of broken bones, I was less anxious and felt that overall, it is worthwhile.

The government also makes sure that we do not operate on mice willynilly and that we must keep the numbers to a minimum, otherwise we could be put in jail! It is important to bear in mind that we don’t want to give untested drugs to humans because I know I wouldn’t be happy if they did that to my relatives! I hope you understand where we’re coming from.