I believe that animal testing is a necessary evil. I worked in academic research where I studied traumatic brain injury. Whilst I worked with models that I made, some people in the lab worked with rats to study the effects of blast trauma on brain tissue. As much as we do not want to do it, it is a necessity because we cannot study on humans. But for the experiments, the rats were sedated, tested, and then euthanized. Many precautions were taken to make sure the rats did not suffer. Their brains were studied to see what damage had been done to them. This is important because it allows us to understand the damage done by blasts so that we can better understand how we can treat them. We are many years away from an accurate model that will be able to show us the body’s response to these blast injuries so for now we must make to with what we have. Hopefully one day we will be able to not test on rats.