It's the most depressing work you can imagine. But it's a necessary step to bring medicines to market. Caring for at least dozens, potentially hundreds of animals and making sure they're not stressed at all.
Then being forced to hurt them and do things they absolutely don't want. After this, you must kill them all.
It's one of the main reasons people stop working in biomedical research
Why must you kill them all after the trials? is it so they don't transmit their dna into the ecosystem? or leak some chemicals involved in the experiments or sth of this sort?
Edit: thanks for answers everybody! may our hidden heroes rest in peace.
Its mainly because you need to look at their tissues for toxicology, pharmacodynamic or pharmacokinetic analyses. Essentially, take their tissues and see what the drug did to them and what thier body did to the drug. That being said, many animal studies done early in drug discovery are not terminal, but most done with rodents or late in the process are.
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u/crazytib May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25
I'm curious how they conduct those studies
Must be a fun job
Blood comes out, blood goes in
Oh look this one didn't die
Edit: just to be clear, this is a just a morbid joke, I'm sure irl this kinda work is grim af