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Animal testing is still widely viewed as the least worst option for biomedical progress, even though researchers know more about animal sentience than ever, and animal rights movements – including vegetarianism and veganism, as well as bans on animal-tested cosmetics – have made significant gains. In Test Subjects, the scientists Frances Cheng, Emily Trunnell and Amy Clippinger each explain how completing their PhDs marked a profound turning point in their approach to animal testing. Now working with the animal rights organisation PETA, which executive-produced this short documentary, they detail their personal journeys from using animals in the lab to researching and promoting alternatives. With sensitivity and emotion, the UK director Alex Lockwood explores their experience of staking out an unpopular position in the scientific community, as well as the anguish that animal experimentation can inflict upon researchers and test subjects alike.
Director: Alex Lockwood
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History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
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Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
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Space exploration
The rarely told story of the fruit flies, primates and canines that preceded us in space
12 minutes
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Bioethics
Is it ethical to have a second child so that your first might live?
10 minutes
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
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Cosmology
The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge
13 minutes
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Biotechnology
The two women behind a world-changing scientific discovery
14 minutes
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Medicine
Why surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages
6 minutes