Criticism has been steadily growing over painful experimentation on animals but the interest in how much stress researchers engaged in animal testing suffer from remains relatively low. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, July 13 (Korea Bizwire) — “Whenever the animals I tested are killed as part of experiments, I feel guilty and suffer from stress. Am I mentally too weak?”
This is a question raised on an online community for South Korean biological researchers by an individual who said he is now studying in a neuroscience doctoral program.
Many comments sympathized with this question, with one comment saying, “One of my colleagues moved to another laboratory primarily due to this issue.”
According to the medical community on Friday, criticism has been steadily growing over painful experimentation on animals but the interest in how much stress researchers engaged in animal testing suffer from remains relatively low.
A thesis published by Mo Hyo-jung, professor of the Institute of Endemic Disease at the Seoul National University Medical Research Center, revealed that researchers suffer from various forms of stress during the process of testing animals.
Before the clinical stage where the testing of drugs and treatments are conducted on humans, the pre-clinical stage is conducted on animals to check if drugs and treatments are harmless.
During this process, researchers have to perform two contradictory roles – taking care of animals and killing them at the same time.
The preliminary study was conducted with the participation of 115 researchers and students. Among the respondents, 14.8 percent (17 individuals) said they suffered stress due to the animal experiments.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
