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Persuasive Essay Against Animal Testing

749 Words3 Pages

Animal testing is the intermediate stage between laboratory testing and clinical trials in the use of a new drug. It allows the metabolism of the drug to be seen in vivo and the side effects and outcomes of the drug to be intricately examined. However, this has been a cause of contention for many years. On one side, the use of animals may help highlight the effectiveness of the drug but on the opposing side, animals should not have to go through unnecessary suffering for a trial which will not display the effects the drug has in a human’s body fully. (1) Animal testing should only be employed if the results hold a significant value when applied to humans. One major issue against the use of animals in laboratories is the agonising procedures …show more content…

Animals, while they can get psychiatric diseases, do not get diseases like schizophrenia, humans alone do. This is thought to be related to a region of genes called Human Accelerated Region-associated schizophrenia genes which are not present in animals. (9) Therefore, for drug testing, we cannot accurately “cure” schizophrenia in animal tests as we cannot display it fully. Psychosis, an altered vision of reality (10) and a symptom of schizophrenia, is only seen in humans. Only symptoms of schizophrenia can be created and tested for in animals. Hyperactivity must be created by drugs which increase locomotor movement and heart rate, for example amphetamines. (11) Pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) must be muted to allow sensory overload, using certain strains of mice which inherently have a low PPI. (12) Social isolation can be displayed using drugs such as phencyclidine, which causes rats to become less socially active. (11) As schizophrenia is human-specific, testing the drugs in animals is a variable and unreliable experiment. There is no guarantee the mice with PPI nor the effects of each of the drugs will be the same in one experiment as in another. Side effects and possible harmful effects of schizophrenic drugs are difficult to determine due to this uncertainty and so this animal testing is almost pointless in the case of

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