{"id":866,"date":"2019-01-01T13:55:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T13:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=866"},"modified":"2019-01-01T13:55:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T13:55:57","slug":"attitudes-to-research-on-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/01\/attitudes-to-research-on-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"Attitudes to Research on Animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2015\/01\/29\/chapter-3-attitudes-and-beliefs-on-science-and-technology-topics\/\">survey by the Pew Research Center<\/a> shows the following results about attitudes toward animal research: <i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The general public is closely divided when it comes to the use of animals in research. Some 47% favor and a nearly equal share (50%) oppose animal research. Support for the use of animals in research is down slightly from 52% in 2009. By contrast, there is strong consensus among AAAS scientists for the use of animals in research (89% to 9%). Among the general public, men and women differ strongly in their views about animal research. Six-in-ten men favor the use of animal research. By contrast, 35% of women favor animal research while 62% oppose it. College graduates, especially those who studied science in college, tend to express more support than do those with less education for using animals in scientific research.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/i>Of course opinion and attitude polls are useful, but they cannot be decisive for, say, public health questions.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s good to hear that people\u2019s attitudes on animal research are negative, but it would take so little to destroy completely the credibility of that opinion, by pointing out that of that 50% of people who say they oppose animal research, 99% of them do not oppose the far more widespread horrors of slaughterhouses, but rather sustain them, by eating meat. <\/p>\n<p>And that they do that because they think (incorrectly) that meat is necessary for their health. <\/p>\n<p>And that they think (also incorrectly) that the breeding and slaughter of animals for food is done more humanely than what is done in research laboratories. <\/p>\n<p>And they haven\u2019t even asked themselves whether, while not ready to give up meat, at no cost to their own health, to protect animals from needless hurt, have they really asked themselves whether they are ready to give up any health benefits that come from animal research?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows the following results about attitudes toward animal research: &#8220;The general public is closely divided when it comes to the use of animals in research. Some 47% favor and a nearly equal share (50%) oppose animal research. Support for the use of animals in research is down &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/01\/attitudes-to-research-on-animals\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Attitudes to Research on Animals&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}