• Question: do animals often get hurt in the process of testing? and what do you do if they become injured?

    Asked by anon-251276 to Robert on 22 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 22 Apr 2020:


      Hi. The reasons for testing on animals are to understand what a potential medicine might do to a living body, whether it might be able to cure disease or ease pain and if it is actually safe to use. It is not the intention to cause animals pain, but it can happen sometimes. There are lots of laws in the UK. Scientists have to have a very strong reason before they can test using animals and have to follow very strict rules on how the animals must be looked after. If an animal does become ill or injured, there are always vets and specialist animal carers available to make sure the animals do not needlessly suffer. By testing on animals in ‘controlled’ laboratories, we reduce the chances of suffering. The first time a new medicine is given to humans, it is done in a similar way – it is given to just a few healthy adults in a laboratory and various samples (such as blood and urine) are collected that scientists can look at to check if it safe. Doctors and specialist nurses are available to make sure everything goes OK.

      Ensuring a new ‘potential’ medicine is safe for humans and animals (animals get medicines too) is incredibly important and at the moment, using laboratory animals is by far the most accurate way of testing for this.

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