The Pros And Cons Of Animal Testing

South Korea’s National Health and Welfare committee has just recently created a bill that will ban the uses of cosmetics and its ingredients, but it only works against areas that have an alternative to their cause (Miles). This is a great example of how laws that are supposed to fight animal testing just allow advocates of it to evade the laws’ restrictions. Further on the topic, in the nineteenth-century more companies led to the increased use of animals in testing, and subsequently, groups that set out to oppose the use of animals in scientific experiments (Murnaghan). That battle between those advocates and enemies of animal testing is still present and very alive today. Animal testing causes animals to suffer and does not benefit humans,

For instance, The Associated Press said that the Animal Welfare Act, which has the indirect purpose of protecting animals in laboratories from torture and suffering, fails to protect all animals in experiments, such as mice and rats, and allows U.S. laboratories to use these unregulated animals to evade the Act and not be brought to justice for their horrible treatment of these animals (USATODAY.com). This is important because the law that is supposed to regulate animal testing actually allows scientists to get away with treating their animal experiments as badly as they want. Furthermore, Stephen Latham, the Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for bioethics, and graduate of Harvard Law School; regarding animal testing he admitted that the U.S. system for regulating animal testing leaves gaps (Latham). This is an important statement because an expert in law is telling us that our regulation does not protect the animals in our laboratories from suffering. Although the regulation system is shown to be a failure to keep animals out of harm’s way, many people argue that the Animal Welfare Act is a well enough way to protect animals in testing. But as shown, U.S. laboratories can bypass the Act and treat their animal models however they please. The poor regulatory system for animal testing in our country does not do its job and allows for animals to continue being simple

According to a study done by the FDA, ninety-two percent of drugs, which were produced from animal models, failed to be approved for regular use by humans after they were tested on humans (neavs.org). This means that the vast majority of drugs made from animal testing were not able to help humans and the suffering of those animal models was simply a waste. Elias Zerhouni, who is a medical doctor, researcher, and the former director of the National Institutes of Health, even went as far to say that animal testing has led research to stray away from being used for comprehension of human biology, and we should refocus away from animal testing to get back on track for medical progress (McManus). This shows that animal testing is not helping us understand and cure human diseases. Some people believe that such examples as the use of mice to produce Gleevec, a drug that fights cancer, is reason enough to say that animal testing benefits humans medically (amprogress.org). However, they are wrong because this is one example of progress and does not do justice to the benefits of animal testing as a whole, as these benefits do not exist. Failed drugs from animal models and the lack of medical progress prove that animal testing does not contribute to medical progress for