Don t scientists have the responsibility to use animals to keep looking for cures for the diseases people suffer from?
More human lives could be saved and more suffering spared by educating people on the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly and cleaning up the environment than by all the animal tests in the world. Animal tests are primitive, and besides, we have modern technology and human clinical tests. Even if it could be proved that we have no alternative to using animals which it can t as George Bernard Shaw once said, You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilised behaviour. After all, there are some medical problems that can probably only be cured by testing on unwilling people, but we don t do it, because we recognise that it would be wrong.
