I abandoned my pursuit of medical research and dropped out of grad school because I couldn't stomach the animal testing and I'd like to think I could have been pretty good at it. I doubt I'm the only one.

I'm not trying to pass moral judgement on the scientists that have made tremendous advances using animals but to actually be the one to do it requires a steely conviction that the ends truly justify the means because the means for me were straight up traumatic.

A toll is taken on the researchers as well even if they found better ways of justification or coping than I was able to find. I can't believe you can just hurt animals so frequently and completely detach yourself from it unless you're built very differently than most people. I would wager any researcher that's worked with animals, if they're being candid, has taken some serious emotional damage from doing that work.