Ethical Issues With Animal Testing

The products that are sold at supermarkets, drugstores, and shops had to pass many requirements and assessments in order for business establishments to sell them as goods. An assessment that is often used by the business establishment is referred to as animal testing. Animal testing are procedures that are performed on living animals for research purposes such as basic biology and diseases, effectiveness of products, and the human and environmental safety of consumers that use the products being tested. First, the scientists create the experimental population. They may use purpose-bred/genetically modified animals, or they may gather normal animals. Next, scientists attempt to mimic the disease by artificially inducing the condition into

Animal testing does serve several benefits. According to animal-testing.procron.org, animal testing has led to multiple life-saving treatments and cures to diseases, and it has ensured the safety of cosmetic and health care products. The website also states, “There is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system,” and that animals are appropriate research subjects because they are genetically similar to humans in several ways (1). In addition, animal subjects prevent the use of human subjects, animals subjects can benefit from the results of some animal testing, animal subjects have shorter life cycles than humans, and animals don't have “cognitive ability or moral judgment that humans do,”

The following are some facts, statistics, and data related to animal testing. Www.animal-testing.procon.org states, “research on living animals has been practiced since at least 500 BC,” (1). According to hsi.org, it is estimated that more than 100 million animals worldwide are killed each year in laboratories, and “every nine out of ten candidate medicines that appear safe and effective in animal studies fail when given to humans,” (1). Only a small proportion of countries collects and publishes data concerning animal use for testing/research, so the exact amount of animals use is unknown. “95% of animals used in experiments are not protected by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, and cold-blooded animals such as reptiles and most fish.” Furthermore, data that is published does not include surplus animals. Data shows that animal studies fail to predict real human outcome in 50% to 99.7% of cases because other species rarely naturally attract and suffer from the same diseases that are accumulated in humans. For example, according to neurologist Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH, over 100 stroke drugs that were effective when tested on animals have failed in humans, and over 85 HIV vaccines failed in humans after working well in non-human primates (Akhtar 1). Despite all of these facts, “A 2011 poll of nearly 1,000 biomedical scientists conducted by the science journal Nature