To oppose animal and in particular primate research on the grounds that it is cruel and inhumane is a perfectly legitimate position to adopt. Personally, I think that primate research is on pretty dodgy ground when it comes to ethics. Primates are so intelligent that almost any experiment on them must be wrong.

However, you weaken your arguement by saying that results generated by animal experiments are useless. This is not true. You may wish it were true, but it is not. The real world is much more complicated.

Scientists don't use animals for the fun of it. they certainly don't use them because they are cheap. I have worked in a University research lab (HIV-1 research) and although I didn't use animals myself, many of my collegues did. We only had mice in our lab, but I can tell you that the individual's research grant was debited by £25 for every mouse use. I don't call that cheap. the real cost to the university (including time, food, security etc) would I guess be perhaps twice that - per animal! The cost of keeping a monkey for a year is of the order of £50,000.

Animals are used as a last resort. They are not generally plesant to work with. Scientists who do work with them often complain about bites, scatches, smell, allergies, a bad feeling about what they are doing and mountains of regulations and paperwork. They would gladdly swap animal work for a cheaper tissue culture alternative in a nice clean bright lab if they could.

You support (as I do) the use of non-animal alternatives. However there is a contradiction in your reasoning:

If the results of an animal test can not be applied to humans (because animals are not humans), how can the results of a tissue culture test (the most common animal alterntive used) be applied to humans (cells in culture are not humans). If you follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, there would be no way of testing drugs other than testing them exclusively on ill patients (ethical problems here as well).

People must judge how they feel about animal experiments by asking themselves (either as a general principle or in respect of a particular proposed experiment, as is done by the Home Office who licence animal experiments in the UK) is "is right to inflict suffering on aninimals in order to prevent human suffering". My answer would be yes under some circumstances (the suffering to the animal must be as low as possible and the potential benefit to humans must be high). My answer is yes because I believe that humans are more important than animals (and animals are more important than plants, and primates are more important than mice, and mice are more important than insects etc).

You are entitled to answer "no" to the above question and use that as a basis for opposition to animal experiments.
That is a perfectly reasonable position to take - you only weaken it by saying that animal experiments don't work.

Let me give you an example:

If you remove the panreas from a dog, it dies of diabetes. If you give the dog insulin it stays alive. That is the experiment that provided a cure to human diabetes. You may say that it is wrong to remove the pancreas from a dog, -fair enough. It is not fair enough to say that the dog experiment did not lead to a cure from diabetes.

One must always argue the facts or your views will be dismissed.

Dr Tim (ex-biomedical reseacher)

To oppose animal and in particular primate research on the grounds that it is cruel and inhumane is a perfectly legitimate position to adopt. Personally, I think that primate research is on pretty dodgy ground when it comes to ethics. Primates are so intelligent that almost any experiment on them must be wrong.

However, you weaken your arguement by saying that results generated by animal experiments are useless. This is not true. You may wish it were true, but it is not. The real world is much more complicated.

Scientists don't use animals for the fun of it. they certainly don't use them because they are cheap. I have worked in a University research lab (HIV-1 research) and although I didn't use animals myself, many of my collegues did. We only had mice in our lab, but I can tell you that the individual's research grant was debited by £25 for every mouse use. I don't call that cheap. the real cost to the university (including time, food, security etc) would I guess be perhaps twice that - per animal! The cost of keeping a monkey for a year is of the order of £50,000.

Animals are used as a last resort. They are not generally plesant to work with. Scientists who do work with them often complain about bites, scatches, smell, allergies, a bad feeling about what they are doing and mountains of regulations and paperwork. They would gladdly swap animal work for a cheaper tissue culture alternative in a nice clean bright lab if they could.

You support (as I do) the use of non-animal alternatives. However there is a contradiction in your reasoning:

If the results of an animal test can not be applied to humans (because animals are not humans), how can the results of a tissue culture test (the most common animal alterntive used) be applied to humans (cells in culture are not humans). If you follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, there would be no way of testing drugs other than testing them exclusively on ill patients (ethical problems here as well).

People must judge how they feel about animal experiments by asking themselves (either as a general principle or in respect of a particular proposed experiment, as is done by the Home Office who licence animal experiments in the UK) is "is right to inflict suffering on aninimals in order to prevent human suffering". My answer would be yes under some circumstances (the suffering to the animal must be as low as possible and the potential benefit to humans must be high). My answer is yes because I believe that humans are more important than animals (and animals are more important than plants, and primates are more important than mice, and mice are more important than insects etc).

You are entitled to answer "no" to the above question and use that as a basis for opposition to animal experiments.
That is a perfectly reasonable position to take - you only weaken it by saying that animal experiments don't work.

Let me give you an example:

If you remove the panreas from a dog, it dies of diabetes. If you give the dog insulin it stays alive. That is the experiment that provided a cure to human diabetes. You may say that it is wrong to remove the pancreas from a dog, -fair enough. It is not fair enough to say that the dog experiment did not lead to a cure from diabetes.

One must always argue the facts or your views will be dismissed.

Dr Tim (ex-biomedical reseacher)

I agree completely with your statements. Drug companies do not fund animal research because of some desire to inflict pain on cute little bunnies, they do it because legally they have to. Current UK law states that each new drug has to be tested on 2 animal species, one of which has to be a non-rodent. Personally I think this is sensible, but if you disagree, do not target the companies that carry out the research, and certainly not the researchers. Get involved in trying to change the law.

I would rather that drug companies, carried out their research in this country, where we do have an animal proceedures law and inspectorate and their activities are monitored, than taking the work abroad to a country where there is no such regulation.

Kat

"Get involved in trying to change the law"

Oh silly me, I'll get on the phone to Tony right away. I'm sure he'll listen to me instead of the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, no problems.

Drug companies use animal experiments because they're quick, convinient and can generate pretty much any result they want by choosing the right species. They're also happy to discard experimental data when it suits them on the grounds of differences between species. Drug companies test on animals so they can generate big profits, not because they give a damn about your safety or making sick people better.