The Guardian published an article today about animal experiments, and specifically about how there has been a 1% increase in the use of animals in experiments.
This is a tricky one for people with whole system (systemic) conditions such as Crohn’s disease – other conditions affect just one or two types of tissue in the body, but our condition draws in the whole of the GI tract and the immune system – both of which are inextricably linked to other body systems. You couldn’t culture some cells and test them because it would not show the systemic effects.
Many of the new drugs such as infliximab could not be developed without the use of animals (in this case mice).
However, the use of animals can give misleading results, because although they are similar, they are not exactly the same.
The experiments can cause pain, they mean inducing diseases into normally healthy animals and of course the effects and side effects of the drugs being tested.
Animals are kept in unnatural environments and their behaviour is restricted.
How do you feel about animal testing for Crohn’s Disease?
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