Animal testing
Animals are used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medications, check
the safety of products destined for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and health
care uses. Research on living animals has been practiced since at least 500 BC.
Pros:
1. Animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments for humans and
animals alike.
Nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research
using animals, according to the California Biomedical Research Association. Without animal
research, medicine as we know it today wouldn't exist. Life expectancy in this country has
increased, on average, by almost three months for every year of the past century. Within the
living memory of many people diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, leukaemia and diphtheria
killed or crippled thousands every year. But now, doctors are able to prevent or treat many
more diseases or carry out life-saving operations - all thanks to research which at some stage
involves animals.
2. Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human
beings in many ways.
Just by being very complex living, moving organisms they share a huge amount of similarities
with humans. Humans and other animals have much more in common than they have
differences. Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans. Mice share over 90% of their
genes with humans. A mouse has the same organs as a human, in the same places, doing the
same things. Most of their basic chemistry, cell structure and bodily organisation are the same
as ours. Fish and tadpoles share enough characteristics with humans to make them very
useful in research. Even flies and worms are used in research extensively and have led to
research breakthroughs
3. Animal research is highly regulated, with laws in place to protect
animals from mistreatment.
In addition to local and state laws and guidelines, animal research has been regulated by the
federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) since 1966. As well as stipulating minimum housing
standards for research animals (enclosure size, temperature, access to clean food and water,
and others), the AWA also requires regular inspections by veterinarians. All proposals to use
animals for research must be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
(IACUC) set up by each research facility.
Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animals’ sake and to ensure reliable
test results. Research animals are cared for by veterinarians, husbandry specialists, and
animal health technicians to ensure their well-being and more accurate findings.
Cons:
1. Animal experiments aren´t needed for medical progress
Animal experiments are part of medical history, but history is where they belong. Compared to
today’s potential to understand the basis of human disease at cellular and molecular levels,
experimenting on live animals seems positively primitive. So, if we want better quality medical
research, safer more effective pharmaceuticals and cures to human diseases, we need to turn
the page in the history books and embrace the new chapter—21st century science, because
many non-animal replacement methods such as cell-based studies, silicon chip biosensors,
and computational systems biology models, can provide faster and more human-relevant
answers to medical and chemical safety questions that animal experiments cannot match.
2. Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings.
Independent scientific reviews demonstrate that research using animals’ correlates very poorly
to real human patients. In fact, the data show that animal studies fail to predict real human
outcomes in 50 to 99.7 percent of cases. This is mainly because other species seldom
naturally suffer from the same diseases as found in humans. Animal experiments rely on often
uniquely human conditions, being artificially induced in non-human species. While on a
superficial level they may share similar symptoms, fundamental differences in genetics,
physiology and biochemistry can result in wildly different reactions to both the illness and
potential treatments.
3. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane.
Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, food and water
deprivation, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction
of pain to study its effects and remedies, and “killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-
breaking, decapitation, or other means,” according to Humane Society International. The US
Department of Agriculture reported in Jan. 2020 that research facilities used over 300,000
animals in activities involving pain in just one year.
Only 5% of animals used in experiments are protected by US law. The Animal Welfare Act
(AWA) does not apply to rats, mice, fish, and birds, which account for 95% of the animals used
in research. The types of animals covered by the AWA account for fewer than one million
animals used in research facilities each year, which leaves around 25 million other animals
without protection from mistreatment.
Resources:
- Why Animal Research Is Necessary. Harvard Medical School
[Link]
- Stone, K. (2012,). About Animal Testing. de Humane Society International
[Link]
- Research using animals: an overview. University of Oxford
[Link]
overview
- Animal Testing. (2023). [Link]