Animal Testing Is Necessary

Humans experiment on other animals for a number of reasons, from understanding the body and organs to discovering world altering vaccines and medicines. The origins of animal testing in the United States can be traced back to the 1950’s. According to Kathleen Conlee, vice president of animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States, and Andrew Rowan, president of the Humane Society International, animal testing first began when vast numbers of primates were captured to help develop a polio vaccine. Once a vaccine was created, researchers began using the excess animals to perform other experiments and research queries (Conlee & Rowan S31). Nowadays, drug and chemical research companies widely apply animal experimentation. Though

Hope Ferdowsian, assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington University, and Nancy Beck, a scientific and policy adviser with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, report that researching on animals does not effectively predict the effects of chemicals on the human vascular and neurological systems (Ferdowsian & Beck 3). Because animal testing cannot accurately determine how certain drugs will affect these systems, its use becomes unnecessary. Furthermore, Dr. Natalie Burden, Dr. Fiona Sewell, and Dr. Kathryn Chapman, program leaders at the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research for the United Kingdom, describe one underlying problem of animal testing by asking, if a chemical is safe for a rat or mouse, “is it acceptable for a human to be exposed to it” (Burden, Sewell, & Chapman 2)? Simply stated, human bodies often respond to chemicals differently when compared to other animals. An experiment testing the effects of a new drug could cause a deadly reaction in a small rodent, yet pose no major threat to a human. Likewise, a drug proven harmless to a rabbit or mouse could be harmful to a human being. Animal testing does not yield irrefutable proof of a drug’s effectiveness. Researchers must perform even more experiments when tests fail, and as a result, research

Dr. Natalie Burden, Dr. Fiona Sewell, and Dr. Kathryn Chapman describe how animal testing is “resource intensive, particularly considering the housing and staffing costs” (Burden, Sewell, & Chapman 3). In order to perform animal experiments, researchers must house a large number of animals, which is expensive. According to Kathleen Conlee and Andrew Rowan, maintaining primates alone uses “$1 billion of the National Institutes of Health’s total $32 billion budget” (Conlee & Rowan S32). Keeping animals is not the only factor that causes the high price of animal testing. Sonali Doke, writer for the Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal, and Dr. Shashikant Dhawale, associate professor and head of pharmacology at the Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, mention the need for skilled technicians and the existence of “time consuming protocols” when performing animal tests (Doke & Dhawale 224). Training researchers and following protocols wastes a significant amount of money and time. Additionally, experiments that take a long time to complete are tasking on the mental states of