Animal Testing Research Paper

Research published within the last few years has expanded our understanding of animal sentience, suggesting that an animal’s potential for suffering harm is greater than has been appreciated and that safeguards must be reassessed; however, this type of newly gained information is not taken into account in the outdated ‘‘3 Rs’’ (Ferdowsian and Beck 2). This lack of laws protecting animals and the misinformed, deficient foundation for them ultimately causes animal test subjects to suffer every day with little to no protection from cruelty and unethical practices.

The true value and dangers of using animal experimentation data for predicting human outcomes has become questioned in recent years by the scientific community and in fields such as

Marketed as a sleeping pill, it caused the thousands of women who took it to give birth to babies with malformed limbs. Though it was only tested on animals post-disaster, it was discovered that, even if thalidomide had been tried on animals before its market release, it would still have been approved for commercial use since the vast majority of species would have showed no birth defects, and of those that did, only at much greater doses than recommended for humans (Pycroft and Martson 36). This shows that animals, even the most similar to us, are very likely to react differently to chemicals and drugs than humans. The vast biological differences between animal and human physiology and anatomy render animal experimentation a dangerous, nearly pointless task due to the high chance of the data being useless when extrapolated for human treatment. In fact, “recent systematic reviews of treatments for various clinical conditions demonstrated that animal studies have been poorly predictive of human outcomes” (Ferdowsian and Beck 2-3). This ultimately means most side effects from animals are not the same as humans and that the data obtained from animal experimentation often becomes useless when translated into human treatments and medicine.

In fact, “public support for animal testing has been in steady decline since the 1950s, dropping from above 90 percent in 1949 to only 57 percent in 2013” (Ericson 1). However, this attitude change is also owed to the innovation and discovery of new methods that could be utilized instead of animal testing. These new methods would substantially reduce the unpredictability of animal experimentation and save the lives of many innocent animals, which would otherwise be tortured to death; additionally, these methods are often cheaper and quicker than animal experimentation. One of such innovative new research methods is the chemical compound named chemosynthesis liver. Drugs are often run through animals' livers to test them, which is time-consuming and gives only limited data. However, a chemosynthesis liver is able to give much greater and clearer information as to how the drug and liver are interacting. Mukund Chorghade, a chemist over two decades in the pharmaceutical industry, explains that the chemosynthesis liver allows researchers "to give you very accurate structural data—[where] nothing is left to guesswork” (Ericson 2). Another alternative option to animal testing is achieved through the use of computer simulations, also