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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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Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
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Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
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Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
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Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
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Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes