So I'm an animal researcher (mice) and I do wish some regulations were tightened on animal housing inspections. As a researcher I want my animals healthy, happy, fed just right, never mixed up or "lost" but the university's animal care staff has more control over these issues than me and more inspections, better training on techniques, and higher quality facilities would suit me just fine (my experiments would be more reproducible).

But to people who want to call a halt to ALL animal research I want to know:

What scientific discoveries are you willing to forgo? What treatments were worth it? Which were not? What basic biology that led to treatments do you want to give up, for yourselves and for your children?

I strive not to be cruel to the animals I use in my research and here I am down in the trenches, getting peed on and occasionally bitten by mice and it seems some high and mighties just want their scientific discoveries without the science. Unless folks against animal research include in their discussion EXACTLY what science they want to forgo, I will not be getting over feeling like these people are squeamish ingrates. You want to talk about better housing, better inspections, better training, better technique? I am all for it, let's talk. But if you just want to moon about the poor sweet animals whilist you enjoy the all medical science has to offer, well that's gonna piss me off everytime.

Also why does nobody ever talk about how people treat the animals in their homes. Those glue traps people use? The mice die by dehydration, unspeakable cruelty. On the two occasions mice have been found in my home they were put outside (since my husband and I work with mice, we're pretty good at catching them by the tail).

Plus does no one watch nature videos? People idealize the "life in the wild" vs "a whole life spent in a cage" but life in the wild is full of disease, injury, harsh elements, and predators. I honestly believe a well cared for lab mouse leads a nicer life than a wild one.

I understand your point. I think the purpose or the point that the writer of the article was trying to make wasn’t that the people that work at labs with animals are heartless or animal abusers, cruel, careless and view animals simply as tools.

I think the point he is trying to make is that is all around an ugly business no matter how many laws come out to make the business or using living creatures in the name of science less horrifying. I am not willing to forgo any breakthroughs in science, I understand it saves lives. I guess I am naive enough to hope that at some point they won’t be necessary or that the scientist that work in that field follow the laws and treat the animals they use as more than simply disposable tools that can be replaced without a thought for the pain they go through.

I think it also makes people feel that as a scientist the only way to go through years of causing pain to a living creature is to stop thinking of them as animals, as breathing, living, thinking creatures. I know that if I was to be in that position I could not stomach the work, and that it would probably make it easier for me to think of them as things. And if that is the case, if it easier for scientist to think of them that way then it might also be possible that since they don’t think of them as living creatures then they don’t bother about minimizing the pain.

I understand, but Clayton's story of growing up in a cell and being subjected to that constant torture is not a pretty story, and treating it as if is nothing, as if it doesn’t matter, as if we are weak for caring, as if you are stronger for going through it, is not going to help either animals, nor animal activists or experimentation on animals in the name of science. I think giving it the importance it deserves, admitting that is horrible thing but necessary, honoring their unwilling sacrifices by treating them as more than "Sample C" would go a long way to make the thought of it more bearable.

IF you do NOT believe that "the people that work at labs with animals are heartless or animal abusers, cruel, careless and view animals simply as tools," THEN why are you "naive" to hope "that scientists.... treat the animals they use as more than simply disposable tools that can be replaced without a thought for the pain they go through."??? Giving no "thought for the pain [animals] go through" is the definition of cruel and careless. Either you view scientists who work with animals as cruel and careless or you don't. Perhaps you see SOME scientists who work with animals as cruel and careless, but not all scientists? I can understand that.

You also do a lot of supposing in your second paragraph about how you imagine scientists manage to work with animals and how you imagine "if it [is] easier for scientist to think of [animals as things] then it might also be possible that since they don’t think of them as living creatures then they don’t bother about minimizing the pain." When you work with animals everyday it is pretty hard to deny they are living creatures. For me, I have to pick mice up, feel their warm bodies, feel their heartbeat, so there is NO denying mice are creatures, not things. The pain they feel is also obvious, they squeak and squirm when they are in pain. And when you have to kill these living creatures and see mice that were just alive, breathing, beating are now slack and unresponsive in death, there is no denying you are "playing God" with these animals. We scientists refer to animals as "Sample C" in papers to seem more scientific, rational, and in great part to cushion the sensitivities of people who don't work with animals. We don't say "Sample C" because we see animals as things. No people are better acquainted with the nature of a mouse or rat than a researcher who works with rodents.

You are not weak for caring. Just don't pretend that just because you are a few steps removed, you don't use animals for science . That would make you weak (and hypocritical). Scientists could do more to acknowledge the sacrifice of animals, but the general public does even less. How often do you take a medication or think of the vaccines you got as a child and think of and thank the animals sacrificed so your life could be better? Time to start. Maybe scientists need to stop cushioning the truth of animal research for the general public so the general public has a better idea just what they owe to animal research? But honestly we are just too afraid the general public will be grossed out and be unable to have a reasonable discussion.

For me a reasonable discussion would always include: 1) if you want less or no research, what advances are you willing to forgo? 2) what level of care do we owe animals? better than what they face in the wild (with disease, injury, predators)? or the life of pets? or the same protections afforded humans in clinical trials?

For me an UNreasonable discussion includes: OMG you are evil for working on animals and I would never do that so I am not implicated in your cruelty! But on a completely separate and unrelated thought, thanks for working out those childhood vaccines and HIV meds and please hurry your ass up on curing AIDS and cancer too.

Millions of animals have been exploited and killed -- yet most animal research has not been successful. What animals might suffer in the wild, etc., is irrelevant.

John Hopkins already has a Simulation Center with mannequins that breathe, have palpable pulses, and display EKG, arterial and pulmonary wave forms, to teach medical students intubation, defibrillation, chest tube placement, criothyrotomy, and other procedures.

We owe animals these alternatives, and should develop more to study disease, educate students, and to test medicine. That's not squeamish -- it's moral.

Your questions assume that medical progress is down to the animal experiments - just because animals were/are used does not necessarily mean that they were the key to the discovery or that advancements could not have been made any other way.
"The predictability of animal studies for human outcomes has been extensively studied. Among 20 published systematic reviews, animal experiments demonstrated significant potential to contribute toward the development of clinical interventions in only two cases, one of which was contentious. Not good."
Dr. Andrew Knight

We must attempt to assess the scientific value of animal experimentation because until we do, we will be left with a vague version of the intellectually untenable "it just works" argument. Any 'successes' must also be judged relative to cost, considering the billions of animals abused annually, the damage to humans in terms of ADRs, disasters like Thalidomide & Vioxx, clincial trials' damage, financial costs, and the possibility that therapies & cures may have been lost because the results of animal studies are not predictive for humans.Sometimes the results coincide, others times they don't- like Russian roulette- humans always being the true guinea pigs when a new drug or therapy is tested.Which is why safe & effective medicine is the result of clinical trials & long term usage in populations of humans.
"Animal research makes guinea pigs out of the people who have to take treatments which are tested on monkeys rather than human biology-based methods such as tissues. Acc. to the US FDA, 92% of new drugs don't pass human trials, despite success in animals, mostly because they don't work/aren't safe."
Dr Margaret Clotworthy, Safer Medicines Trust, Cambridge, England

We need to consider using stronger public health measures to reduce chronic illness caused by environmental factors. Research into cures for lung cancer involves extensive animal experimentation, yet smoking causes 90% of lung cancers. The moral cost of these experiments falls on the back of researchers, smokers & tobacco companies.We face similar moral dilemmas about other diet induced & environmentally induced diseases. There is something morally objectionable about asking non-human animals to pay the costs of human folly.

Forward thinking scientists are forging ahead with the development of non animal methods directly applicable to people, despite being hampered by sluggish regulatory bodies, lack of funding & political will.
As Dr John Xuereb, director of the Cambridge Brain Bank,acknowledges: "Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases occur in humans and it is in human tissue that we will find the answers to these diseases."

BIG difference Bill Nye, while humans are used in experiments they are WILLING participants (or at least that is what the public is lead to believe) capable of making their own decisions on participation in science or not; Furthermore, your argument of is it better to torture them in the lab or let them fight the wild is absurd and completely without merit. So because the wild life they would lead in their natural habitat is dangerous we should not let them live there but rather torture and kill them in science experiments. So is that to say that because there is disease and crime and sickness in the world we should lock baby's up in a cage instead of letting them go out into the world and live their lives. As John Stossle would say "GIVE ME A BREAK!!!"