More than one hundred million animals are killed in laboratories each year in the United States alone. While animal studies have led to many life saving medical discovers, it comes with a cost: animal testing is extremely cruel. Animals should not be used for testing because it is inhumane, there are countless methods to replace animal testing, and animals do not make good test subjects for research used on humans.
First, animals should not be used for testing since animal testing is cruel and inhumane. Over the years, there have been numerous accounts of animal cruelty in animal testing facilities. An article from the Human Society International included reports of “Exposure to drugs, chemicals or infectious disease […] Food and water deprivation
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Today, scientists have created virtual drug trials and simulations to test new and developing drugs. These tests can produce results “in as little as three minutes to four hours, unlike animal testing which often takes two to four weeks” (NEVAS). Another alternative is called “in vitro” testing, which is a test tube lined with human cells. These tests yield more accurate results since they are tested on human cells versus animal cells. A few similar options are sheets of human skin cells or organ chips, which are chips that replicate organs by using human cells. One final alternative method is called “microdosing: when humans are given very low quantities of a drug to test the effects on the body on the cellular level, without affecting the whole body system” (NEVAS). Not only do these techniques not use animals as test subjects, they also cost much less to preform. However, “many studies require a full living organism in a situation where it would be unethical, or impractical to use humans” (Speaking of Research). An example of this would be when studies include injecting a cancerous tumor into the subject to observe how the tumor, as well as the body, responds to certain treatments. It would not be logical to place cancerous tumors into human beings. Despite this information, there are still numerous testing methods that do not involve