Animal Experimentation: We Owe It To Them

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” (Mahatma Gandhi). Scientists have been using animals for biomedical research for centuries. They provide a source to get information scientists can not get without harming humans. A lot of debate is spread about whether it is good or bad. Animal experimentation is a controversial topic because it is helpful to humans, but it is also cruel and inhumane.

The testing of animals in scientific and commercial research has been debated for many years. Some people view animals as companions or part of the family, but others think of them as a way to advance medicine by providing researchers with a means to develop better medical techniques, discovering vaccines, and helping to find a cure for a disease. Regardless of how a person may view animals, they are worthy of better protection by our government and us as a society. Although some animal testing has been successful, there are research alternatives that could eliminate the pain, suffering, and deaths that animals endure in scientific research. Therefore, animals should not be used in scientific research

In history, animal experimentation has played a significant important role in leading to new discoveries and human benefit. However, what many people tend to forget are the numbers of animal subjects that have suffered serious harm during the process of experimentation. Each day across America innocent animals are used as test subjects for products that have little to no relevance importance. Animal testing has had many negative issues arise in society in a negative way. Debating over the animal rights movement has raised many questions and concerns for years. There is an ongoing controversy regarding if companies should stop testing their products on animals. Although animal research has been the cause of many medical breakthroughs, is it morally and ethically right to put animals in these kinds of situations? This is one of the underlying questions that must be solved before it is too late. When considering how truly reliable the results of animal test are, and the expense of testing will help bring new light to the problem. By simply passing a policy will not only address this issue, will help better products and medicine in the future.

The first reason animals shouldn’t be used for scientific experimentation is because it is a cruel practice. Majority of the animals that are tested on are poorly treated. According to peta.org, “U.S. law allows animals to be burned, shocked, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain damaged.” Harming animals like this can have extremely negative effects on them and their future lives. It can affect the way they live physically and mentally. Neavs.org says, “It can cause severe suffering, such as long term social isolation...They spend their lives in barren cages, unable to make choices, or express natural behavior.” These animals don’t have a say in how they’re treated in these experiments, and the conditions that they’re put in are life-threatening.

Animal experimentation also known as animals testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study (Wikipedia). Animal experimentation is a highly controversial topic as many debate between whether it is ethical to use animals for such experiments or research and if the use of animals is really necessary. Many argue that there are other methods that we can use to test out certain studies and products while others argue that the use of animals is crucial because it is inhumane to use people. I personally feel that we need to use animals for animal experimentation for many reasons such as there just isn’t a functioning system quite the same as ours, everyone including animals has benefitted from the tests and many other reasons that will be further discussed. But I do however, feel that animals should be treated better and put in better living conditions prior to being experimented on. I understand both sides of the argument and am prepared to advocate for both sides in this paper.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of an innocent animal? How much harm can they do to you? Picture yourself being this helpless animal; you are being put into different rooms for horrific experiments. Scientists are holding you down carelessly, injecting unknown chemicals into your system, and causing nothing but pain and distress. Then you ask yourself, what did I do to end up in here? When you look around, there are many others just like you. You feel as if your life is insignificant. The sad truth is that, Animal Experimentation (AE) is used for human benefit only, not caring that these harmless animals have feelings just like the rest of us. Testing cosmetics, drugs, and dangerous treatments on animals is unfair. Although animal testing has improved medical progress, experimenting on an animal should be prohibited because animals react differently than humans, the costs of these experiments are outrageous, and it is unethical.

“For as long as medical science has existed, animal experimentation has played a major role in research.” (Parks 9) When animals are in trials they are forced to eat and inhale substances, are exposed to harsh chemicals, and their organs are removed to observe internal effects (Yashiki 1). Millions of mice, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are being used for experimentations across the United States (Animal 1). Primates will be tested on if there is a scientific question that can not be answered by using other animals (Parks 25). Animals can spend their entire lives being studies because they have such short life spans (Parks 10). Up to 92 percent of the drugs that are tested on those animals and were considered safe will be proved unsafe in human trials (Yashiki 12). The FDA requires that any new drug be tested on animals first to determine the impact it will have on the human body (Parks 11). Although scientists are primarily the one's who test on animals, they also have been trying to make new ways of testing products (Yashiki 4). Researchers have discovered ways of creating cell and tissue models that replicate those of humans. These models can be used in place of mice, rats, rabbits, etc. (Alternatives 4). Testing on animals, especially in the medical research department, can be beneficial. It has helped provided safe drugs and panaceas to people

The goal is to minimize and ultimately replacing animal experimentations with non-animal methods. After reading the two references that were utilized, the article written by Stephanie Liou, “Animal Research: The Ethics of Animal Experimentation,” is an unbiased unlike “Animal Experimentation” who seems to be a reformist after utilizing words such as “exaggerated” when describing arguments against experiments.

Animal experimentation goes back to the 17th Century; its purpose is to use conscious animals as experiments where they practice the advances in medicine to assure a product’s safety before it is released to the market. For example, with the help of animal tests, scientists study new treatments for diseases in humans and animals. Must be remembered, laboratories in the U.S kill more than 100 million animals of different species a year when doing these experiments.

Scientists, such as Aristotle, would perform experiments on living animals. These scientists would often conduct animal experiments to advance the understanding of anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology and then relate it back to humans. They would even use animal testing as a method to test surgical procedures before using them on real patients. In the past handful of decades the practice of using animals for biomedical research is strongly criticized by animal protection and rights groups. Laws have even been passed to make these studies more ‘humane’. The real debate though is over the ethics of animal testing. It has been estimated that the number of animals that are tested is around 100 million each

Since the beginning of researching animals, there have been many different opinions on the subject. Many people argue that animal testing is inhumane and unfair to the animals. However, animals are a very important factor in health advances and are necessary for furthering the knowledge of humans. There are laws and organizations such as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that strive to protect animals from any type of harm during their laboratory lives. Though there are many pros and cons of animal research, tests ran on animals are only for the benefit of humans. Some of the experiments may seem cruel, but there are new technologies forming which will help reduce the amount of animals used in research.

In addition to the fact that animal experimentation is ineffective, unreliable, and costly, testing on animals also violates animal rights. Do we think that just because we are superior to animals that we have the right to subject these innocent creatures to cruel and painful experiments? The superiority humans feel over animals may be the reason why humans feel less troubled by inflicting pain on animals. Or perhaps humans justify this cruel act by saying that animals would not be used in experiments if their use was not absolutely necessary. The pain and misery these animals are put through is absolutely unjustified, especially since the experiments they are subject to are proven to be unnecessary and even pointless. As Ingrid Newkirk states, animals in the laboratories are "under constant stress from fear, the loss of control over their lives, and the denial of all

Every year in high-school, the discussion about animal experimentation would be brought up either in a Science or English class. The discussions would last about three quarters of a period, and they would go nowhere because nobody could agree whether it was a good or bad thing to do. I would always be in the middle of the debate because, I believed that it was a good thing. I am for animal experimentation because it has revolutionized the medical field, regulates the overpopulation of certain animal species in the environment, and follows a certain set of laws set by the Animal Welfare Act.

Animal experimentation by scientists can be cruel and unjust, but at the same time it can provide long term benefits for humanity. Animals used in research and experiments have been going on for 2,000 years and keep is going strong. It is a widely debated about topic all over the world. Some say it is inhuman while others say it’s for the good of human kind. There are many different reasons why people perform experiments and why others total disagree with it.

Professor Charles R. Magel once said, “Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: 'Because animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”(Animal Experimentation par.1) As far as we know animals have been used for experiment purposes since at least 500 BC and currently at least 26 million animals are being tested on each year.(Should Animals Be Used par.1) Furthermore, “According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies.” (Should Animals Be Used par.1)