• Question: Can welook into everyday animals for cures to big diseases?

    Asked by jossy to Edd on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I don’t know!

      I think one of the big problems we have with this is that a lot of the biggest diseases that affect us (e.g. AIDS) only affect humans, or if they do affect other animals they are affected in different ways. So even if we did tests on everyday animals the results may not be relevant to humans. The other thing we need to be careful of is that the animals don’t suffer if we study or test them. I am against animal testing in general but I can see why it could be acceptable if to do so would mean we could definitely cure a serious disease. If we know the study won’t be relevant to humans then I would be less supportive of any such testing.

      What do you think? It is a difficult problem because we don’t really know how successful we may be until we try.

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