Animal Research Provokes Some 'Misgivings'
25/02/11 16:43 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 16:43.
As a vivisectionist and a vegetarian, I have personally struggled with the moral dilemma of the use of animals throughout my research career. Nearly 30 years ago, I actually dedicated my Ph.D. thesis to the 200 rats that I had to kill for my graduate research. Since then, I have always tried to find alternative approaches when available to minimize the use of experimental animals and have terminated them as humanely as possible. However, it is impossible to eliminate the use of animals in biomedical research and expect to significantly advance knowledge and understanding of ourselves and the world about us. I suspect that part of the motivations for the increasing use of simple model organisms and cell culture for research stems from similar misgivings by other scientists about sacrificing mammals and many other vertebrates.
By contrast, it is clear that I do not have to kill animals for sustenance to live a long and healthy life. In 2011, it can be estimated that the following numbers of land animals will be slaughtered for human consumption world-wide: chickens, 52,000 million; ducks, 2,700 million; rabbits, 1,200 million, pigs, 1,600 million; turkeys, 640 million; geese, 630 million; goats, 400 million; and cows, 295 million. [You can get a running counting of the animal slaughter for this year on the Poodwaddle 2011 World Clock (www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock)].
Estimates of the total number of animals used annually in research world-wide range from 60 to 150 million. It is evident that less than 0.25% of the land animals killed by humans are used for any kind research purposes. It would be far more impactful for animal activists to tackle the food industry and the greater than 95% of the world population that are consumers of meat products.
Link to the original blog post.
As a vivisectionist and a vegetarian, I have personally struggled with the moral dilemma of the use of animals throughout my research career. Nearly 30 years ago, I actually dedicated my Ph.D. thesis to the 200 rats that I had to kill for my graduate research. Since then, I have always tried to find alternative approaches when available to minimize the use of experimental animals and have terminated them as humanely as possible. However, it is impossible to eliminate the use of animals in biomedical research and expect to significantly advance knowledge and understanding of ourselves and the world about us. I suspect that part of the motivations for the increasing use of simple model organisms and cell culture for research stems from similar misgivings by other scientists about sacrificing mammals and many other vertebrates.
By contrast, it is clear that I do not have to kill animals for sustenance to live a long and healthy life. In 2011, it can be estimated that the following numbers of land animals will be slaughtered for human consumption world-wide: chickens, 52,000 million; ducks, 2,700 million; rabbits, 1,200 million, pigs, 1,600 million; turkeys, 640 million; geese, 630 million; goats, 400 million; and cows, 295 million. [You can get a running counting of the animal slaughter for this year on the Poodwaddle 2011 World Clock (www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock)].
Estimates of the total number of animals used annually in research world-wide range from 60 to 150 million. It is evident that less than 0.25% of the land animals killed by humans are used for any kind research purposes. It would be far more impactful for animal activists to tackle the food industry and the greater than 95% of the world population that are consumers of meat products.
Link to the original blog post.