Today's conservative stands way to the left of the conservative, even of 1980 vintage.
So hope rests eternal that the rights of animals will continue down the path of reform, and towards a world that recognises the right of all animals to live free of unnecessary pain and suffering....one would hope!

Nothing compares with butchering unborn babies in mothers wombs

Absolutely Emma, everything done on lab rats monkeys etc. can be done better using wasted human tissue or a few cells grown in a Petrie dish. As for science saving lives? Our politicians actively and effectively prevent that by their use of government created and installed rules and regulations that forbid certain research. Namely nuclear research, i.e., MSR thorium and the consequent production of volumetric Bismuth 213. Bismuth 213 is a virtual miracle cure for death sentence cancers like pancreatic cancer, myeloid leukaemia, or some very nasty brain cancers. And we allow hundreds to die every year because our technology-agnostic pollies have forbidden the very technology that produces the maximum amount of this alpha isotope. Which has a half-life of just 5 minutes and needs to be first attached to an antibody then introduced into the patient without delay for optimum effect, even with just hours to spare as they fight for their very lives. That is how efficacious bismuth 213 is and as long as these government created and installed rules and regulations prevent even R+D into the nuclear technology? We will be denied this medical miracle and extremely affordable, reliable dispatchable, baseload, carbon-free energy. Just as justice deferred is justice denied. So also is medical miracle cures denied! A literal death row death sentence for the innocent of any crime against society; victims, and just as surely as those monkeys we kill in the name of misbegotten science? Alan B.

Correction. The half-life of 5 minutes should be read as 45, i.e., forty-five minutes. Getting lots of third-party assistance with the grammar! Apologies for the continuing lack of paragraphs. Guess it'll be returned/remediated, when I fork over the demanded blackmail? In the meantime, more apologies for the slabs of words I am now allowed! Alan B.

Science does save lives, however, the emphasis is on human lives not other animals.

Hey Emma,
Every medical drug approved by the TGA or FDA is exhaustively tested on rodents, then dogs, then non-human primates, before it is tested on a human. There are many reasons for this!

Here is a scenario: you have a drug meant to cure liver disease, and it does have benefit in the Harvard ‘organ-on-chips’ (lined with human liver cells). However, it is not yet ready to stick into a human because it could have lethal toxicity in any number of the other organs and systems in the human body. Hopefully you can understand why you must demonstrate safety of a drug in a whole animal system that is not a human, before you test in a human.

Yes- there is a trend to assess potential safety issues using in vitro techniques (such as organ-on-chip) rather than in vivo systems. These reduce costs of preclinical and clinical trials, reduce the amount of compound (they’re called compounds, not drugs, before they are TGA approved), number of compounds evaluated, give early indication of problems and overcome ethical issues.

Even then, human clinical trials are first tested in healthy humans before they are tested in the sick patient population that the drug has been designed to treat. I hope Emma, that the average Aussie like you does not think that animal testing is a choice when it comes to medical drugs. It’s not.

Animal ethics committee systems managed and monitored in Australia for the purposes of research are very stringent. They have:
* Animal ethics committees
* Applications to do animal-based procedures
* Heavy penalties for unacceptable behaviour towards animals
* Surveillance: checking that things are done properly

In contrast, I once watched a farmer castrate lambs with nothing but a razor blade and his teeth. That was in central west NSW. In the case of cosmetics, the harm to animals is often major and benefit to humans minor. I think these are bigger ethical issues that need tackling,,,