Persuasive Essay On Animal Testing

Medicine has come a long way since days when doctors would bleed a patient to let the bad blood out. Throughout history animal experimentation has lead scientists to new discoveries and advancements in the medical field. Without using animals for medical research, treatments like heart bypass surgery, organ transplants, insulin, blood transfusions and vaccines for polio, tuberculous, meningitis would not be perfected. The progress that has been achieved in the knowledge as well as safety in medical procedures is correlated directly to medical research. Using animals for medical research has become a global debate .While testing on animals is not morally ideal for some, science and technology have yet to come up with a more viable option.

Almost every Nobel Prize recipient in the medical and physiology category has used animal testing for their data.(Foundation for Biomedical Research). The extraordinary discovery of the polio vaccine is an example of this. Scientists injected monkeys with the polio virus taken from a boy that had died of the deadly disease.This meant that scientists all over the world could take extracts of the disease and infect other monkeys, allowing different groups of scientists to study the disease simultaneously. After more testing with monkeys and mice, Dr Ender’s research group were able to move on to growing the virus in tissue cultures. A step essential to creating a vaccine for the disease. A Nobel Prize was awarded to them for their work in 1954. Dr. Sabin, the doctor who helped develop the oral polio vaccine is quoted saying that “it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among animals.” (Speaking of Research.) The World Health Organization writes that the polio vaccine has saved 10 million people from paralysis and 1.5 million children from an early death.