Question: Do you think it's right to test on animals? And if you couldn\'t use animals would you be able to continue your work?

Heather Eyre answered on 20 Jun 2013:

Whether something is right is a very complicated question, with my work (like a lot of medical work) there could be veterinary uses too.

I’m absolutely against the testing of cosmetic products on animals, we don’t need make up and anti-ageing creams testing for us we have enough already and it’s all in the name of vanity.

At the moment my rats are irreplaceable, but there is a lot of animal work where they are trying to reduce animal use in the future: there is a synthetic kidney now and a lung. I’d love to use the synthetic kidney – but my work is really long term and is affected by lots od factors like high blood pressure which wouldn’t be produced in the kidney alone. I like working with my rats too, I really do look after them and they do get to know you too.

Animal use within science is kept to the lowest number possible, we have a set of rules called the three R’s:

Replace:

can you find out the same thing another way. Maybe computer modelling or by using cells or even Human biopsy samples.

Reduce:

Can you get extra info from someone else’s animals by working together? Or maybe you can use one set of animals and do two things at once? You have to be careful that the two samples are both useable otherwise you could end up having to do it again which would be terrible! Or maybe you can use better analysis methods that mean you only need 5 animals rather than 10.

Refine:

Can you make the experiment better, or maybe use a none invasive method like MRI scanning, or even train your animals to eat something from a syringe rather than needing to inject them (like the polio vaccine is on a sugar cube for humans rather than a jab!) It can also mean using a different species – like flies, the cells from frog spawn or fish rather than mammals where that is possible.

So a lot of science is carried out using cells or modelling, and this work is used to massively reduce animal use. So it is very complicated, and the regulations regarding animals in science are far stricter than those about keeping pets at home. I understand it is really difficult to get to the bottom of animals in science – as scientists are often worried about speaking out, whereas animal rights groups are not so it’s very easy to get a one sided view of the issue. Two places I’d recommend for finding out more are: FRAME and NC3Rs. Both work with scientists to help reduce animal use.