Your Stories

There is no doubt that animal research has helped develop new treatments for chronic and life-threatening conditions.

In this section, those involved with research talk about their work and patients share their stories about how treatments developed using animals have changed their lives for the better.

To submit your own story, click here

 

Story submitted by Mandy Howard, 20 April 2009:

'As a parent of a child who was diagnosed with severe epilepsy, I find it hard to accept that any parent would have issues with animal research. The drugs my child has been given have eventually, after many years, led to him now being fit free. Because of the severeness of the fits, my child has been left with learning difficulties for the rest of his life. It could have been worse, without effective medicines he could have died.'

'My mother died from cancer, and my father has had a debilitating stroke. Other family members suffer from cancers, brain diseases, asthma. Many families will experience these kind of illnesses. Nobody wishes for animals to be used in this way, and I believe they should only be used when there is no other way, and only for medical research - whenever possible I only buy cleaning/beauty products which are animal testing free.'

Kevin Elliott, letter to the Oxford Times, 15 January 2009:

The animal rights lobby claim to be helping animals, but they forget one important group. That's the people with health problems and disabilities who benefit directly from animal-based research.

Until recently I had a serious spinal condition, which left me in massive pain and hardly able to work. Thanks to animal-based research I had an operation where bone was taken out of my pelvis and placed into my spine to reinforce it. The pain has now completely gone, I can work full-time, and have a social life.

The research underpining this operation could only have been done on animals. Test tubes and computers won't let you work out how bones fuse together.

The animal rights lobby tell us that we should treat animals in the same way as humans. But if we do that, we're condemning people with health problems and disabilities to pain, to isolation, to unemployment, and to massively reduced quality of life.

I want to see the best possible conditions for animals, and will be happy when we have alternatives that work. But until that day, we need to keep animal research legal.

Anne Johnstone, writing in the Glasgow Herald, 9 January 2009:

In 21st century Britain, neither of the two central arguments of those who oppose all animal testing holds water. It is neither "unbelievably cruel", nor does it "achieve nothing".

My father has just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Nobody has the right to deny me the hope that brain surgery may slow its progression, a technique only attempted after practising on animals. Call me "speciesist", but there is an argument here about greater good that few standing at the bedside of a loved one with MS or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's would gainsay.

Or, as Charles Darwin put it in 1871: "I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity. It is a subject that makes me sick with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall not sleep tonight."

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