[irisharty]

hey i am doing a project on animal testing, i dont want to do something obvious like animals. has any one got any ideas of things relating to animal testing? iv thought of test tubes and dna thanks!!

[h82think]

make models of testing on humans instead it will show the viewer that it could happen to anyone

[student x]

Ideally, do something which makes people feel the perspective of the animal being tested upon. Theres a misconseption some people have that animal testing doesnt actually hurt the animal or cause sevre trauma. Do something that raises the awareness of the pain from the animal.

[Whynot?!?]

alternately you could do something constructive that shows the necessity of animal testing, why not focus on the advances that couldn't be made without the testing and then to highlight the care that must be take as much as possible (as student x points out sometimes the animal will still be treated in a cruel manner - but the rules around testing are strictly enforced to ensure as much compassion is used as poss) to prevent pain you could do a section on the nazis and the testing on humans they did, whilst what they did was horrendous the implications it had for medicine today are enourmous, you could possibly discuss how out of the horror something useful emerged and whether or not it was worth it?

[AllergicToFairydust]

I second Whynot's idea though looking at the necessity of animal testing in general might not be specific enough to go into huge discussion if you have a word count. I don't know what the project is for but if it was for a university level, I'd be thinking about finding a specific area and looking at that area is detail. If you want to look at advancements, pick a disease of choice which had advancement through animal testing. You can then discuss the background of the disease, what was involved in the testing process e.g what was done to the animals? what animals and why were used? Maybe then you can look at papers or interviews involving people who did the testing to see whether you can finding any quotes or discussions on the morality of the animal testing which could lead you to discuss them in relating to the disease e.g was the results worth the harm to the animals? would the same progress have been made without the testing? did the outcome for the testing cause a "breakthrough" or was it simply done to make progress on the development of an already known safe drug?

On the other hand, you could go the cosmetic route and discuss the reasoning and point of animal testing from that perspective with the same sort of discussion as I've outlined, where related, but of course directed at cosmetics.

[London Prophet]

If you want a drug, look at penicillin.

Many people have no idea about the role of animal research in its development. Fleming used non-animal method in his initial discovery, but it wasn't for 10 years, until Florey and Chain (who shared the nobel prize with fleming) that animal work revealed the true power of penicillin for fighting infection inside the body was discovered.