"These animals are potentially used for studies that deal with chronic diseases, in particular disorders of the blood vessels, diabetes, disorders of blood forming cells, and anaemias," he said. "They're all being used to study diseases which afflict significant numbers of the Australian and worldwide population. "We do need the answer to pressing health problems, we do need to make progress on chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, the loss of pregnancies, the loss of infants and really do need to make that progress and for some of that work animals are the key to making leaps forward."