• Question: what is the best way to reduce the use of animals in experiments?

    Asked by lozzc to Darren, Deuan, Duncan, Lori-An, Michelle on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by brokenrecord, rebekka, robinsonz, sara96.
    • Photo: Darren Nesbeth

      Darren Nesbeth answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Make non-animal models that accurately predict the behaviour of new drugs in humans. Easier said than done.

    • Photo: Lori-An Etherington

      Lori-An Etherington answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      The best way is probably to think very hard about the experiments in the first place (for example, what do you want to find out? and what is the best way of getting the results?). Sometimes there might be alternatives to animal use and these should be considered carefully.
      Hope this helps.

    • Photo: Michelle Hudson-Shore

      Michelle Hudson-Shore answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      The best way to reduce the use of animals in experiments is to develop and use non animal methods that can be used instead of them. But this is a very difficult and long term way.

      So the best way to to do it straight away is to make sure that scientists plan their experiments properly. They should design them so that the way that they do the experiment means that they can get as much information as possible from as few animals possible. This includes making sure that the results can be checked with the right statistical test to ensure that they mean something. By this I mean that they can use specific maths to check that what they found was actually caused by something rather than just happening by chance. They should also check that there are no other ways of doing the experiment they are planning that might not need animals and that it hasn’t been done before.

      Unfortunatley, there is a lot of confussion about experimental designs and that is why as part of my job I organise Training Schools to teach scientists more about this and to help them imporve their experiments and reduce the number of animals they use.

    • Photo: Duncan Hull

      Duncan Hull answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      There are several ways this can be done, one that particularly interests me is the use of more and better software to design new drugs. Some (but not all) of the identification of potential drugs can be done by software and computers – by making ‘virtual drugs’ and having more accurate models of how they work on a computer. This is just one way that experiments using animals can be reduced.

      However, I think we will probably always need animal experiments of some kind or another for a good few years to come.

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