Over 61,000 dogs suffer in U.S laboratories every year. More than 21,000 cats are forced to endure painful experiments in U.S laboratories anually. Animals have been used repeatedly for scientific research throughout history. However, not all animal studies have been successful when humans were involved. Animal testing torments many innocent creatures for unreliable and costly research that is not necessary.
Testing on animals can be very dangerous and could potentially harm the animal. This could cause the animal to die if they get a bad
Scientists have helped the world in many different ways throughout time. They have come up with hundreds of vaccines and medications to improve the everyday life of a human. One of the methods they use to help come up with those improvements is called animal testing. Scientists use dogs, cats, mice, monkeys and other animals when testing. Scientists have used a variety of methods when testing and some of those methods include exposure to drugs, exposure to toxins and genetic manipulation.
In the year 1980 according to Ian Murnaghan, a graduate with a Bsc (Hons) and Msc, was when research for alternative animal testing technology began due to unethical issues, slow, and high expenses results. Years later, the nearly successful alternatives involved Vitro and Silico (Model and Computer based) testing. Gregory Mone, a Boston MA- based writer and author, in his article, “New Models in Cosmetics Replacing Animal Testing.” explains about Vitro and Silico testing in great detail then mentions that the research is “progressing faster” than experts have expected. Today animal testing has decreased due to scientists finding alternative methods of testing, finding results efficiently, and using ethical concepts involving cosmetics.
Animal testing goes as far back to greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) and Erasistratus (304 – 258 BC). Whom once performed testing on animals to advance behavior of something or who aspired to alter brain activity. However there was scientists such as Galen (129 – 199 / 217 AD), who used animals in order to attempt to improve various human activity within the body. Specifically focusing on cures and treatment for those who don't have them. Later, Ibn Zuhr began to use animal testing to benefit humans in which he would perform surgeries on them to ensure that the procedures would not harm humans.
Animal testing is a subject that has been deemed controversial for quite a long time now, and is still argued today. Now, you'll see many companies breaking from this animal testing, and making vegan products and selling almost just as well. Just listening to the word,"Animal testing" automatically makes you think of something horrible and inhumane, but there are reasons that it isn't. California Biomedical Research Association says that almost every medical breakthrough within the last 100 years has been derived from animal testing. Animals, especially those that have extremely similar DNA to ours, have been exceptionally helpful in medical research.
Animal testing has been in our world as early as the 1920’s according to an online article titled, “Product Testing: Toxic and Tragic”. Studies show that it is the law for products to be tested on animals before they are released. More than half of the animals die, and half the products that were tested do not even work. The animals that do survive do not get treated to get better, they get put to sleep. In an online article, it also tells us that 92 percent of the drugs tested on those animals “fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work” (11 Facts About Animal Testing).
One main reason against animal testing is the suffering, and the pain that the animals goes through. Crueltyfreeinternational.org talks a lot about the suffering of the animals, and gives this one example of an experiment of Botox in mouses. It says this; “..This cruel test involves injecting hundreds of mice directly into their abdomens and counting the number who die from poisoning over the next three days. Tens of thousands of mice suffer in this way in the UK and Ireland every year.” So basically, the scientists just counts off the mouses as they slowly die.
Humans are the superior species, but this doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t possess a moral mindset when it comes to animal testing. Animal testing is the use of non-human animals in research and development projects, especially for purposes of determining the safety of substances such as foods, drugs, and human luxuries (e.g. cosmetics, facial cleansers, perfumes, adhesives, etc.). Considering the previous, we can conclude everyone has consumed and/or used a product verified by the FDA from the result of animal testing. While society may consider animal testing inhumane, it is necessary for medical breakthroughs.
2.0 Body Content 2.1 Reduction A way of justifying animal testing is to reduce the number of animals involved in animal testing. In 1970s, 5.5 million of various animals including chimpanzees, dogs, mice, rabbits, monkeys etc. are involve in the medical research field as test subjects for various experiments (PETA, 2014). However, some experiments were not beneficial to the development of the medical field but cost over a million dollar. In the United States of America, 16 billion dollars had been used on animal experimentation- 1.9 million dollars are used on the experimenting on heart diseases on dogs conducted by Ohio State University, 5 million dollars were used on obesity experiments conducted by Oregon National Primate Research Centre, while 16 million dollars were used by Harvard University to fund 1200 individual experiments on drug addiction by using monkeys as test subjects. Although animals were sacrificed in the experiments, most experiments did not reach its goal due to flaws causing a waste of life (Grant, 2013; Peta, 2014).
Animal testing has always been an immense controversy. As people, we all have different opinions and moral values, and this definitely effects how we see things. Of course this means that everyone has something dissimilar to say about the issue of testing on animals. However, who is to say whether it is truly right or wrong to use animals in the process of discovering in the medical field?
Many Americans have pets in their homes, who they consider to be important part of their lives. As a result many people are concerned with animals rights. Many people believe that animals should be treated the same as humans, however the struggle to find cures for some of America 's most common diseases, animal testing is a key to find these cures. Animal testing should be continued as long as it is done humanely, so we can find cures and new medicines.
A very good example of why we need to test on animals is the Thalidomide Disaster. In the 1950s-60s The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ran tests to determine if it was safe to use. The Thalidomide drug was given out to pregnant women to help cure morning sickness. Instead of helping, it killed many babies, and approximately 15,000 babies were born with limb defects. This drug was tested on animals, but all the necessary test were not ran to insure the safety of consumer.
Introduction Using animals in research has been an important issue for discussion as it affects both humans and animals equally. While the arguments for using animals in research are strong; the argument that it is cruel and unnecessary in many cases is also strong. The basic arguments and reasoning for and against animal testing will be presented.
According to Murnaghan (2016), some companies breed and sell animals for the purpose of animal testing. Other than that, animal testing is done repeatedly to create an average for the purpose of accuracy. Since animal testing may happen more than once, additional cost may incurred. Therefore, besides losing more animals, we also lose an enormous amount of money on animal
