• Question: say if you thought you had discovered the cure of cancer , a professor told you that the odds that this was the right cure was 1/3 , would you then take the risk of testing this cure on an animal or scrap this altogether?

    Asked by zmzmzm to Allan, Angela, Diva, Harriet, Nathan on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Allan Pang

      Allan Pang answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      The research area I am currently on does not deal with any kind of animal testing. But hypothetically speaking, if I do personally believe (against what my supervisor or professor thinks) that there is a chance the medicine will work and I have to prove it by testing an animal, then yes, I will do it.

      However, if I do think that the chance of the medicine curing a cancer is very slim, I will have to go back to my “drawing board” and check if I can improve the drug to prevent side effects as well as the ability to cure the disease.

    • Photo: Nathan Langford

      Nathan Langford answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      That’s a very hard and tough question to answer. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about these sorts of questions very often in my work. I love animals and wouldn’t like to hurt them, but cancer is a disease that kills lots of people and makes lots of families very sad – and finding a cure for it would be a very great thing indeed. To ask another question, do you think hurting or killing an animal to try and find a cure for cancer is worse than killing an animal to eat it?

      I don’t know what I would decide, but it’s certainly an important thing to think about. Good question.

    • Photo: Diva Amon

      Diva Amon answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Hey zmzmzm,

      That is a great question which I had to think for a while about.

      As a vegetarian and animal lover, I try to limit any negative impact on animals that I could be responsible for. In my job, most of the animals have died by the time they reach the sea surface which means that I rarely have to kill any. When I do though, I can get quite upset but I just have to tell myself that it is all in the name of science.

      I think if I was in the position of having a 1 in 3 chance to have discovered the cure for cancer, I would go through with testing on animals. 1 in 3 is actually quite high in the stakes and cancer kills about 6 million people a year. The drug could potentially alleviate many peoples suffering. I could much more quickly justify to myself testing a possible cure for cancer on animals than testing something like makeup or shampoo. With that said, I still don’t know if I could actually do the testing myself…….
      Really tough question zmzmzm!

    • Photo: Harriet Groom

      Harriet Groom answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      A good question and a hard one to answer.
      The thing with treatments is that they have to be better than the current options. We are fortunate that for most cancers there are some really good treatments, most of which have better than a 1/3 chance of curing it. The drug would therefore have to be as effective as what is already available but also have fewer side-effects to go into clinical trials. The chance of curing a particular cancer also depends on the person. We are moving more into a world where treatment can be tailored to certain individuals based on their genetics or type of cancer.
      Like Diva, I don’t eat meat (I’m actually vegan) so I think that animal testing should be avoided where possible. You have to apply to work on animals and they have to be satisfied that what you are doing has a good chance of success. So in the end if you do decide to go for it then it’s not always your decision whether it happens or not!

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