Animal Testing

As need for new treatments arise, the use of animals for research increases. There are two main uses, and both have powerful arguments. On one side, animal rights activists feel that the lives of animals should be protected as if they were human. In contrast, supporters of animal testing feel that cures for our most virulent diseases will be found with the help of animals.

Pro’s:

-Finding drugs and treatments to improve health and medicine. There are already some lifesaving medical breakthroughs that are the result of animal testing, like open heart surgery, organ transplants, effective insulin, vaccines for deadly diseases, …

-It is the most accurate way to learn the effects of substances in a living body

-Ensuring the safety of drugs and other substances

-Human harm is reduced and human lives are saved but also animal lives are saved because of animal testing.

-Many of the medications and procedures that we currently use today wouldn’t exist and the development of future treatments would be extremely limited.

-Many argue that the lives of animals may be worthy of some respect, but the value we give on their lives does not count as much as the value we give to human life.

-Using cell cultures can only reveal side effects on a molecular level and cannot unfortunately, reveal side effects like organ failure, rashes, tumors, or cardiac arrest like animal testing can.

-Using computer models cannot always predict unknown variables that can be discovered with animal testing.

-Animals may not have the exact same philology as humans but animal testing is accurate enough to test whether a substance is even safe enough for human trials.

Cons:

-Death- animal testing leads to the pain, suffering and even death of about 1.4m animals annually. The greatest victims of course are mice and rats who account for about 90 percent of these.

-Price- the cost of animal testing is very high. Can you imagine that animal testing costs billions of dollars annually? This is attributed to the fact that these animals need to be housed, fed, treated after a test or when they fall sick. Animal testing may also need to be performed on a similar animal for a series of months in order to establish a given ground.

-Differences- inasmuch as animals share some similarities with human beings, there are some differences that certainly lead to error. Through these differences, either wrong drugs are administered to human beings or innocent animals suffer death and pain in the process.

-Tests on Humans- it has been discovered that inasmuch as tests are performed on animals, some trials still have to be administered on human beings to find out whether there will be positive results. This has led to concerns on whether there will be avoidance of animal testing at the end of it in some way.

-Inhibiting Research- studies suggest that the continued use of animals by researchers may lead to avoidance of development of alternative techniques because the researchers already feel they have a powerful technique at hand.

-Psychological Differences- scientists themselves have said that there are some psychological differences between human beings and animals such as emotions. Further study suggests the uselessness of animal testing based on the fact that animals and human beings don’t share anything on social, cultural and familial grounds.

-Moral Issues- concerns have been raised on the ethical and moral grounds of scientific research. This is based on the fact that the whole process is cruel to them, leading to a psychological kind of trauma.

-Physical Suffering- some intelligent animals such as dogs and cats are always locked up and confined in small cages for a very long time. Of course this makes them very dull as they are naturally playful. Penetrative surgeries and radical procedures without the need for anesthesia are performed on these animals painfully. They are then left fractured with every cut and stitch on several parts of their skin and bones.