Negative Effects Of Animal Testing

Animal testing, though beneficial for scientific study, discovery, and experimentation, can be detrimental and threatening for the animals tested on, making it a very debatable and controversial topic. Hope R. Ferdowsian, a George Washington University Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of medicine, and Nancy Beck, a member of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, are authors of the article “Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing and Research.” They discuss the “3 R’s” as being the reduction, refinement, and replacement of animals when doing scientific research. They write, “These principles encouraged researchers to work to reduce the number of animals used in experiments to the minimum considered

These animals are tested with things such as medicinal substances, cosmetics, and food additives as well as tested to learn more about diseases and biological disorders. Many of these tests are useful and important in order to make sure that if a human were to consume them, they would have no adverse or negative effects. However, if it will cause harm to the animals, they should not be done, and most if not all are likely to potentially create physical and psychological problems. “Although pain and suffering are subjective experiences, studies from multiple disciplines provide objective evidence of animals' abilities to experience pain (Beck and Ferdowsian, “Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing”).” Since these animals are obviously able to feel pain, the testing should be precautious and considerate of the animal’s welfare. Nuno Henrique Franco, a graduate in the Laboratory Animal Science group, agreed saying, “While animal experiments have played a vital role in scientific and biomedical progress and are likely to continue to do so in the foreseeable future, it is nonetheless important to keep focusing on the continuous improvement of the well-being of laboratory animals, as well as further development of replacement alternatives for animal experiments (Franco, “Animal

For example, new cosmetic products have been tested recently in ways without the use of living laboratory animals. "Generally, these methods look at the structure of the chemical compound or molecule under consideration, run it up against a database of chemicals with known toxological effects and search for substances with similar chemical structures. If a new chemical or ingredient lines up with one that has proven toxic in previous tests, this suggests the new compound could be similarly troublesome (Mone, "New Models in Cosmetics Replacing Animal Testing").” Time should be taken to think about ways similar to this one, and the use of animals may eventually be negligible to