by Avril Lang

Created on: June 18, 2007   Last Updated: July 30, 2010

Which of us, faced with the serious illness of a loved one, would tell the researcher on the brink of finding a cure to close down his laboratory?
Not many I believe even although they may intellectually feel that animal experimentation is wrong. For most of us it is an uncomfortable choice between two evils.

But there have been claims by some scientists, as well as animal rights groups, that this is not the most effective way of testing drugs intended for humans as there are too many physiological differences to yield reliable results. The stress on the animals is also cited as a source of misleading effects.

However there is a very long list of vaccines and drugs which were successfully developed using tests on animals.

Without realistic alternative testing methods I believe we have been stuck with a position which for many of us amounted to saying, 'Yes, it is morally wrong but we're going to do it anyway'. The best we could do was to require that the laboratories treated the animals humanely, a condition which has not always been satisfied.

I believe that this is now changing. Some researchers are already using computer modeling, cell cultures, synthetic products and bacteria, and now there are stem cell technologies.

The promise this work holds out is not only that of new drugs and treatments for humans but the potential for medical research and development which does not harm animals.

However, for the foreseeable future, mice, dogs and other animals will continue to be used, particularly now that techniques have been found in which human DNA can be inserted into animal egg cells to provide human stem cells on which drugs can be tested directly. So the question about the morality of using them will not go away, but the difficulty of answering it may diminish a little if their use is reduced to non harmful, non-stressful procedures.

It is early days yet and stem cell research is still controversial with governments dragging their heels at times with funding, but if people support it enough then hopefully it may eventually lead to a time when we no longer have to live with a conflict between our actions and our opinions, a time when we can achieve the ideal of medical research without animal testing.

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