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Asked by anon-174278 to Alex, Yewande, Tim, Melanie, Hayley, Carl on 14 Jun 2018.
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Yewande Oyekenu answered on 14 Jun 2018:
I work with animals because in my field of pharmacology ( How drugs work in the body) we are required to test new drugs on animals by a technique called Pre-clinical testing. If the drugs work then we test it on healthy volunteers and then a few patients and finally in a large group of patients at a hospital.
I cannot take the human brain and experiment on it, so, I am able to use animals that are mammals who have the same brain as humans to have an idea on how my drug will work before trying a human experiment.
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Alex Seeney answered on 14 Jun 2018:
If you want to study animals, are there any animals in particular you want to study? Have you thought about what work you might want to do? When I was at school, I wanted to be a vet, so I wrote letters to my local vets when I was 16 to ask if I could come and work with them for a week and see what it was like. That also helped when I was applying to university, because it showed that I was serious about working with animals.
I think it also helps to choose subjects at school that will help – so I studied science and maths, which gave me some of the knowledge I would need to go and study to be a vet.
I’ll also say this – just because you decide to do something now, don’t worry that you’ll have to stick to it. About two years into my vet degree at university, I decided that I didn’t want to be a vet! I had realised that I wanted to work with fish instead, so I went and did a different degree, and that took me to where I am today.
I would advise you to talk to people whenever you can to get advice – I have found that people are always happy to share their stories and explain how they got to do the jobs they ended up doing 🙂 If you have any more questions about what I’ve said, feel free to add a comment and I’ll reply to it!
Comments
anon-174278 commented on :
Thankyou!