• Question: do you ever feel sorry for animals when u have to test things on them ?:(

    Asked by shannon to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Personally, I dont need to do any work with animals because I can just use cells in a dish for what I need to do.

      But I did use to work on maggots (it turns out we can use maggots instead of mice to find out which bacteria are more dangerous) and sometimes, yes I did feel sorry for them! Even though they are kind of gross.

      Luckily we always take very good care of the animals and even my maggots I gave then an anesthetic before I injected them!

    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      I don’t usually feel too bad about my flies — they’re the fruit flies that you might see in rubbish in the house and might want to get rid of anyway!

      Also, anything I might do with them, I actually anaesthetize them, so they don’t hurt.

      I’ve never done any experiments except with fruit flies or cells in a dish. Most scientists avoid doing experiments with mammals if they can! Only if the science is justifiable does it get done.

    • Photo: Arthur Dyer

      Arthur Dyer answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      I haven’t done animal testing in this lab yet because i’m looking at ways to create really life-like cells in a dish to avoid using animals as much.

      no scientist ever enjoys working on animals but it’s something that we need to do… everyone who works with animals learns about the three Rs which are reduce (try to use as few animals as possible) Refine (make sure you get the most out of the experiments and the animals to use as few as possible) and Replace (Only use animals if there is no replacement)

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