How to tell people you don't donate money for animal experiments

‘Give money to cancer research.’

‘Donate to cystic fibrosis research’

It can be difficult can’t it, when you object to animal experiments on ethical grounds and are continually being asked to donate to charities that you know fund animal experiments.

You don’t want to come across as someone who doesn’t care about human beings, because that’s not true. You can care about both humans and animals. They are not mutually exclusive. Compassion is limitless like the ocean.

So, what do you say?

I don't give money to charities that do experiments on animals, and I tell people it’s because they experiment on animals. But, I don’t leave it at that because then I’d get the old ‘you care more about animals than you do about humans’ nonsense.

I also point out -

• That any money you give to charities which commission animal testing is wasted, because just because something works on rats, cats or monkeys, does not mean it will work on humans. We are biologically too different.
• I usually mention thalidomide and the various medical trials that left some of the participants fighting for their lives. Click here to read more about human tests that went disastrously wrong despite the fact the medication worked on animals.
• Giving animals diseases is not the same as humans getting diseases that may develop over time because of things like pollution and lifestyle factors like smoking, drinking and over-eating.
• Many of the experiments carried out on animals have been done time and time again and always with the same results, so it’s a waste of time and resources not to mention illogical to fund more of the same.

Click here to read opposing views on whether the use of animals in medical research ever be justified.

Note in the case of David Price who backs animal experiments, he uses phrases like ‘Research using rats suggested that a "memory switch" could help Alzheimer's patients’ and ‘A new approach to cancer vaccines has successfully treated prostate tumors in mice.’

If the memory switch was done in humans there would be no need for ‘suggested.’ If the cancer vaccines were tested on humans and they worked that would mean they worked on humans and not just in rats.