PETA / Animal Testing / Ethics

[Euchale]

"I am not dumb enough to believe that if there is a way other than animal testing, it would not be used"- A friend of mine

As most of you probably know I´m working in sciences. To be more exact the field is experimental tumor research. One of the things we have to do is animal testing. Why? Because you need to create a environment where the conditions are the same as in an human body. Since human testing is forbidden you have to use something that is as close as possible: Animal testing. Right now there are people working on "Bio-reactors" something that has the same conditions as a living body, but this is still in its infancy.
How does the process of handling animals for testing work? (I only know it in Germany, it might be different in other countries)
First you have to send a contract to the government stating the following things:

• What experiment do you want to do?
• What is the possible result of this experiment?
• How many mice will you use for it?
• What is the burden your animals will have to bear (for example: open wounds, cancer and so on)?
• Is it possible to do a preliminary study with a small amount to see whether the result can be expected or not?

When you get mice only trained personal is allowed to work with them. You are teached how to handle the mice, how to spot injuries, how to kill them pain-free along with other stuff dependent which course you take.
You will get regular visits where your mouse facility is checked, and if something is wrong you only get one chance to fix it, if you haven´t fixed it by the next visit it will be shut down.

I consider this already pretty good when it comes to ethical treatment of animals.

Now there are companies like PETA who says EVERY testing with animals is wrong. I agree that in some parts of the world animals are treated very bad (if you genetically modify animals in Japan, you are no longer allowed to sell them. That´s their whole paragraph about animal testing...) but taking action in most NA and European countries does not make much sense. For those who are opposed to animal testing I compiled a nice paragraph for an "Advance directive for health care" inside this spoiler that you can feel free to hand out to anti-Animal testing people:

Spoiler

If I become ill in any way shape or form I do not want to be treated with any chemical, drugs or techniques that has been tested on animals, this includes but is not limited to:

• Any drugs that was licensed in the last 100 years
• Life-Support-machines
• Surgery

 

[Keleynal]

PETA are militants, they aren't rational about their opposition to testing.

I'm reminded of friends of mine in Minnesota that have a mink ranch. Mink fur is fantastic for coats and stuff, so they raise them in mass quantities. Every once in awhile, a radical environmentalist will break in and release a bunch of the mink out into the wild. The problem with that is that mink are not indigenous to Minnesota, so it's pretty harmful to release them into a habitat they don't belong in. Both to the mink and the other wildlife. Also, those mink have no idea how to survive in the wild, get food, ect, so they have no chance of surviving. There's no logic that supports that action, it's just people trying to make themselves feel good by picking up misguided causes.

 

[Corvus Rex]

I also work in biotech research and development and I agree that animal testing is an unpleasant necessity. I don't like it, but its really the best and only way to do some experiments. The laws are similar in the US; there are regulations to try to keep the experiments as humane as possible, and any experiment intending to use animals has to get approval from an "Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee" (IACUC). It's also not like every experiment is something out of a horror movie; one of my current projects is a molecular construct that's going to be used to make transgenic mice down the road. All its going to do is allow for some non-invasive imaging on the mice; from their perspective its just going to be the occasional injection of something practically harmless.

 

[Nilf]

I do not work in sciences and never really knew how animal testing was done so thank you for putting this up here. It really is eye opening on how diligent they are to maintaining the proper procedures and I respect that. Do I like to think about mice and other animals getting tested on? No, but like you said the advances that it given to medicine has saved millions of lives. Remember PETA also says having a pet is slavery, so always take them with a grain of salt.