By: Allyson Bennett

Allyson Bennett — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:22:44 +0000

Understanding Animal Research has a good publicly available library of video showing animals in research. It includes some of mice, rabbits, marmosets, and dogs.
http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/resources/videos_library

By: Scicurious

Scicurious — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:36:37 +0000

I concur, I wish there had been time to note that the development of personalized medicine has required and will require animal research to be eventually effective. I also note how well the animal rights side sidestepped the question of what could be done to advance medical research if animal research is absent.

It does worry me, though, that passion and emotion and fire often communicate themselves better than facts. I’m hoping very much that the energetic presence of Tom Holder and the calm and rational words from Dr. Conn will hold the day.

In addition, I was very upset to see the constant footage of large animals suffering out of context. Animal welfare is one of the biggest concerns of animal researchers, and there needs to be footage or information provided to make this clear.

By: Paul Browne

Paul Browne — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:44:19 +0000

I was somewhat disappointed by the debate, particularly that Michael wasn’t given the popportunity to counter Greek’s claim about the predictive value of preclinical animal (and for that matter in vitro) tests and how they are evaluated and the promise of personalized medicine. Perhaps Michael should have insisted on addressing those points before moving on to other questions. One of the reasons that personalised medicine is becoming an option is because of what we have learned from comparing the geniomes of different species and individuals within those species, and through analysis of biological processes in model organisms, with transgenic animals playing a particularly iportant role.

There are also whole new areas of medicine that owe their existance to discoveries made through animal research, stem cell/regenerative medicine for example owes its existance to research in mice performed by scientists such as Martin Evans and Shinya Yamanaka.

http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/2009_b_description.htm

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2007/evans-lecture.html

Dr. Greek can’t have it both ways, implying that there is some sort of vast animal research conspiracy while also claiming that the pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies are moving towards in vitro safety testing of chemicals and personalized medicine. The move towards a primarily in vitro bases toxicity testing system and the groming interest in personalized medicine are real but are in their early days, much of the knowledge and technologies required are yet to be discovered and developed. And as I mentioned above much of the knowledge required comes from animal research itself, for example in developing vitro/computational approaches represent in vivo biology.

Of course the biggest role of animal research is in helping us to learn about the biology that underlies disease, such as in discovering the role of structures such as the telomeres. These advances in our understanding of basic biology underpin almost all other advances in medicine.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/press.html

That is why the overwhelming majority of medical researchers support animal research even though only a fairly small minority actually do it.

Comments on: CNN Debate on Animal Research

By: Allyson Bennett

By: Scicurious

By: Paul Browne