Animal testing on the radio
Public radio has a tendency, in recent months, to only invite people who defend animal testing. With your help, we can hope that this situation changes.
Despite requests from us, including a letter sent to France Culture and to the Radio France intermediary to expose them to the problems of framing and the content of the recent episode on animal testing, we have not received any response. You can help to change things.
On 7 September, France Culture invited two people who are in favour of animal testing on to ‘La Science — CQFD’, preventing any substantive debate on ethical issues.
A valuable episode
Since this date, we have regularly listened to ‘La Science – CQFD’. In contrast with the episode on animal testing, we particularly recommend that you listen to the episodes from 9 and 30 September, which gave the floor to Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal, ethologists and primatologists.
Another positive point: on 28 September, a researcher invited on to the episode regarding Alzheimer’s disease criticised the methodologies currently used in animal testing to study this pathology and to a great extent put forward the use in studying disorders directly on the people who are affected.
Where is the debate on ethics?
Unfortunately, the report from 28 September presented a recent French study having consisted of implanting neuronal cells of humans affected by Alzheimer’s into mice… without calling into question the ethics
of this practice. Animal testing therefore seems to be considered by default to be an acceptable practice in the episode.
The ethical questioning on practices exploiting animals must be systematic, however. This incidentally is the reason for the Montreal Declaration, launched on 4 October and today gathering more than 500 signatures from global specialists on moral and political philosophy and animal ethics.
You can help
Today, we therefore invite you to express your feelings to the Radio France mediator in a brief and polite manner, to highlight the quality of ‘La Science – CQFD’ in general, the specific problems in the 7 September episode on animal testing, and the ethical and social urgency of always questioning these practices when they are mentioned on air in public.
With your help, it will be possible to open the path towards a true in-depth public debate so that the situation finally evolves to fast-track the end of animal testing.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice