• Question: Do you harm any of the animals involved in your research?

    Asked by xfreakygeniousx to Eileen, Naomi, Andrew, Aggelos, Shane on 11 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by ilovenerds, tararyan, caoimheneary, xoxsaoirsehxox, cmd13, niallthenerd, alina, leah2810, joshuaoconnor.
    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 11 Nov 2012:

      Hi! I can’t speak for anyone else, but I do not harm any of the animals that I use in my research!

      Before I went out on fieldwork to take samples of flamingos, I had to get permission from my university’s ‘Animal Ethics Panel’. (This meant I had to fill out a LOT of paperwork, talking about what I was planning to do). They decide whether or not what a scientist is going to do is going to harm an animal, and if the research should be allowed. In my case, they said yes, and so I was allowed to!

      The kinds of samples I was taking didn’t hurt the flamingos at all….its kind of like getting your temperature taken at the doctor. It only took a few seconds, and I was able to release the flamingos back into their homes straight way 🙂

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      I really try to avoid using animals. I certainly dont harm them if I have to study them. We treat them well and vets and other scientists and people always check what we want to do if we use animals to make sure its not cruel and that the work is necessary.

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      No scientist wants to use animals in their research, but sometimes there is no alternative. But it’s important to say that we only use animals when it is absolutely necessary, and then we use as few animals as we can, and we get special training from vets to make sure we can take the best care possible of our animals. We can’t find a cure for a disease without infecting the animal with that disease, which is really sad, but the fact is that we need to do it. But even then the animal will be constantly looked after and harmed no more than it has to be. There are places specially designed to be comfortable and safe for animals to live in and there are full-time staff to look after animals in research facilities, so they are well cared-for indeed.

      It’s really hard to get a licence to work on animals, which I agree with. You have to convince a lot of committees and even the government that the animals will be subject to as little distress as possible and that it is absolutely necessary to use them.

      We are always looking for ways that we won’t have to use animals in research. For example, it’s now possible to grow skin artificially on a plastic dish. This means that animals don’t always need to be used in skin testing anymore.

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