h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please note that thalidomide would have been found to cause birth defects in laboratory rabbits had the drug been tested on preganant rabbits. The drug companies did not do enough animal testing, so it's ironic that this example is wheeled out over and over to justify less animal testing.

In contrast to your 'hours' of research, I spent years in biochemical research and I can honestly say that nobody I met who worked with animals was comforatable with doing it, but they all knew that alternatives were far too simple to replicate the effect of experiments on a living system.

Sure, the final drug tests are on humans, and even then drugs get through that cause side effects. I wonder how many humans would be willing to volunteer to test/take a drug that had not been tested on animals? Not me! Sorry, but if a drug is lethal to animals I'd rather this was discovered by killing a rabbit than a person.

Incidentally, how many life-saving drugs have you refused on the basis that their development depended on animal testing? I don't mean to criticise you personally, but the question does illustrate that this argument is double-edged: Nobody wants to kill animals, but nobody wants people to die either. What do you choose if it's one or the other? *Is* it one or the other? (I think it is, now; it might even have to be so in the forseeable future).