Controversial Arguments Against Animal Testing

Bioscience and technology have been advancing in development, contributing to a better quality of life for people. Before distributing a new medicine, though, scientists have to use many tests to evaluate whether the new medicine is good or not and how it affects human health, along with any other side effects that might occur. Consequently, animals are science’s top testing samples for such experiments. In this way, there are two controversial arguments coming from the use of animals for testing. On one hand, there is support for these practices, while others totally disagree with these experiments. Thus, drawing an adequate conclusion to this dilemma requires an analysis of both sides.
Across history, human beings have had the practice of

To evaluate this, both sides need to be considered as to whether it should be conducted, while analyzing carefully. The main reason to support the use of animal testing lies in the similarity of structures in humans and animals. According to California Biomedical Research Association, animals are good models for biomedical research because their structures are biologically similar to human beings (CBRA). For example, as a representative of primate animals, chimpanzees are proven to have nearly 99 percent of shared DNA with humans, while mice share approximately 98 percent, which indicate they are the most likely of sharing the same health problems with humans (CBRA). Using animals for testing is a method to learn more about health problems so that scientists can ensure the discovery of new

Dr. Akhtar indicated that stressed animals would lead to poor data, which will affect the resulting outcome (1). Most animals are kept in cages in laboratories, which they are uncomfortable with living in an environment that they are forced to eat food, drink water and be injected with painful medication. These reasons cause animals to stress out because they will witness other animals suffering from painful experiments (1). According to Dr. Akhtar, the stress out phenomenon of animals in laboratories is known as “contagious anxiety” (2). For example, when rats watch other rats being decapitated, their blood pressure and heart rate will shoot up. Monkeys that watch other monkeys being restrained for blood collection have their cortisone levels rise as a result. These cases will lead to incorrect data which can affect the research outcome (2). According to a statistic from cruelty free international organization, 95 percent of drugs fail in human trials, while they had promising results in animal tests. Another statistic showed the ineffectiveness of using animals by saying that “out of 93 dangerous drug side effects, only 19 percent could have been predicted by animal tests”