It was heralded in the world’s media when cloned baby
monkeys Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were born in captivity China when it
should have been condemned.
These poor babies will never have normal monkey lives and be
allowed to indulge in their normal behaviours. Instead the two babies will
spend their lives in a lab cage being poked and prodded by so called scientists
and cruelly experimented on.
And the sad fact of the matter is that the pain and
suffering they will endure will be for nothing because animal testing isn’t
only cruel but completely unnecessary and it doesn’t yield reliable results for
humans.
Don’t believe me. Believe scientists like Professor Geoff
Pilkington who is working on developing better ways to treat people with brain
tumours. His own mother died of a brain tumour.
“Many drugs that
work when tested on ‘tumour’ cells grown alone in dishes and then tested in
poor animal models, frequently do not work in the clinic on patients.”
In other words, millions of pounds are being wasted every
single on research using animals that isn’t relatable to humans. Imagine what
results could be achieved if medical research focussed on non-animal methods
that are much more reliable. Well, if you want to find out if some drug works
on a human being then why not test it on a human model?
All of that animal testing has been so successful that in
Professor Pilkington’s words:
“We have not been
able to substantially change the dismal outcome for patients with brain tumours
for fifty years.”
And it’s not just brain tumour research that’s been hindered
by scientists experimenting on animals.
*Professor Pilkington was speaking in Replacement News the
newsletter of Animal Free Research UK (formerly called the Dr Hadwen
Trust).You can read more about them here.
So, why don’t we hear
about more about the success of non-animal testing models?
The top medical journals where most of the media get their
“new breakthrough in cancer research” type spectacular headlines from that very
rarely work in humans because the research was done with animals, want
researchers to validate their research findings through animal testing!
In short, if animal testing isn’t used they tend not to
publish the research. Not very scientific is it?
No wonder the drugs don’t work in humans and millions of
animals are born, kidnapped and breed to live out miserable lives in cages to
be experimented on.
