• Question: why is it so important that we do animal testing on monkeys or apes and not on humans, because in a way yes monkey/apes are similar to us, we have adapted which means we are different, so it would make more sense to do testing on willing subjects.

    Asked by Jack da KING! to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Well, first off, I don’t think we actually do that much testing on monkeys and apes, mice are often quite sufficient. And we do actually do some (safe) on humans.
      Now, there are lots of moral questions involved here. Since you asked why not use humans, I’ll just stick to that though (but lots of people think we shouldn’t use animals either).
      Well, willing subjects are hard to come by unless you pay them, but then is right that someone should be willing to seriously damage themselves with some new medication just to earn money, especialy if they are out of work and therefore have few other possibilities? For example, it’s illegal in most countries to sell an organ (like a kidney), the same should be true of testing possibly dangerous drugs.

    • Photo: Alex Pool

      Alex Pool answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Phillip was right when he said that very little testing is done on monkeys and apes – in fact in almost all cases it’s illegal to do so.

      Mice are generally used. There are a number of reasons, the first is that mice can be bred to be all the same – so if you were to test a drug you know the results are based on the drug and not the mouse. Whereas if you were to test a drug between Phillip and I and there were different results it could be down to a million differences.

      Mice are small, grow quickly and have babies quickly too so you can do a lot of experiments quickly.

      Having said this animal research is very tightly regulated and the animal always comes first. There are very strict rules about what you can and can’t do and animal testing should only be done if there is no alternative.

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