GP’s Back Animal Research, Reveals Health Minister

According to the results of this survey, the majority of British General Practitioners believe that animal research has made important contributions to medicine over the years, but most also agree that the resulting medical research data can be misleading when applied to humans.

An estimated 96% of British family doctors agree that animal experiments have made an important contribution to many advances in medicine, and 88% agree that safety tests should be carried out on animals before human trials of new medicines are conducted.

However, it also seems that GPs feel that “medical research data can be misleading,” with 93% in agreement with this statement. This reinforces the findings of an anti-vivisection group poll of doctors in 2004. The group, Europeans for Medical Progress, found that 82% had a “concern… that animal data can be misleading when applied to humans.”