For centuries animals have been using by researchers as tools for human medications. Researchers admit that they are getting closer to find the cure for the terminal illnesses like cancer or AIDS. But in fact the cure for cancer that researchers found by using mice, did not work in humans as it did in mice. Animals have different biological systems than humans do and they do not suffer from the diseases as the way humans do. Therefore the tests cannot be accurate. “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has noted that 92 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. And of the small percentage that is approved for human use, half are relabeled because
Researchers need to be able to prove animals were absolutely needed for the experiment because many scientists have become uncertain about the reliability of the results fashioned by tests performed on animals. Results produced by an animal do not accurately determine how a human will react due to differences between their bodily processes, structure, and digestion. Although there are similarities between humans and animals, there are also many differences. Animals and humans with the same health problem may not have the same symptoms. How can an experiment on a rat to test a cancer drug show how a human with cancer will respond to the same treatment when people themselves react differently to identical cancer treatments? In fact the American Anti-Vivisection Society (2013) projects nine out of ten drugs that help animals in experiments are unsuccessful when tested on humans (Scientific Limitations of Using Animals section, para 1). It is dangerous to apply these drugs to humans. Not only is money wasted on experiments that fall short of a cure, but people waiting to be healed are dying when that money could be used on more promising tests.
The harmful use of animals in experiments is not only cruel and inhumane but also often ineffective. Animals do not get many of the human diseases that people do, such as major types of heart disease, many types of cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, or schizophrenia. There have been past occasions where drugs passed on animals weren’t even safe. There is no excuse for animal testing in today’s techy world, there are now many alternatives for animal testing that would put an end to the pain and suffering endured by these innocent animals during human testing.
Animals do not suffer from the same diseases that us humans have, for example curing heart failure induced by cutting a dogs aorta will not help to cure heart failure caused by a build-up of cholesterol in human arteries. We waste animal lives everyday and for what? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has noted that 92 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. And of the small percentage of drugs approved for human use, half end up being relabeled because of side effects that were not identified in tests on animals. This makes it extremely dangerous to humans, because animal testing is not dependable, it can cause serious side effects to humans that weren’t an issue to the animals during testing.
Antibiotics for infections, chemotherapy for cancer, and insulin for diabetes have been made possible through testing and research performed on animals. Through extensive research and time, scientists have provided people with new diagnostics, treatments, and even cures. The world would be living without these medical advancements if it weren’t for animal testing. Furthermore, animal testing is the most popular and sufficient way for scientists to progress in their research. Human testing is unethical and risky with new treatments and drugs. That’s why it’s important for experimenting to be continued on animals. Animal testing research provides necessary experiments to modify treatments and advancements in healthcare for
Around 94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials. According to neurologist Aysha Askhtar,MD,MPH, over 100 that were effective in animal testings don't work in human clinical trials. Also some chemicals that are dangerous to animals are extremely helpful to humans. An example is, Aspirin, which is dangerous to some animals but helpful to humans. Animals are also different from humans like the way their bodies work and how they respond to things. And again there are alternatives to solve this problem like vitro glass testing which is using actual human
discovered at a slow rate. Furthermore, animal testing ensures that new drugs are safe for
One reason is the overwhelming number of experimental failures (PETA, n.d.) that are seen as irrelevant. It gave such an emotional impact because it involves the risk of harming and killing animals. In accordance with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, a majority of experimental drugs has failed because animals could not provide accurate response of humans (FDA, 2013). However, out of context statistics are prevalent, specifically on social media. Sources fail to mention the stages and legal regulations considered before processing with lab animals. The stages — such as computer models, automatic screening, cell cultures, microbial studies (“Nine out of ten”, 2014), microdosing (“Alternatives”, n.d.) — are the proposed alternative methods of testing. There are differences between animals and humans, but there are similarities as well from digestion to the cardiovascular system (Festing,
In difference, while many people say that animal testing advances the medical field it has failed more than succeeded. To start, 67% of animals being tested on fail according to UDEMY. Meaning that when people test on animals the test can fail and not be successful. Likewise, according to ProCon.org 150 clinical test on humans fail, but on animals succeed. Humans have failed test that animals passed. Which that can mean that animal testing is meaningless when the test doesn’t help humans or animals at all. As shown above, animal testing advances the medical fields, but can fail more than succeeding.
Throughout history, prisoners have been used in scientific and medical research. Some experimentations being very cruel. Recently scientists have turned to animals as test subjects for different types of experiments involving medicines and cures to diseases. Scientist started to realize that animals weren’t the right test subjects; and tuned to human beings. They could not help with every experiment that wanted to be tested. Animals were proven not to be reliable for safety testing and disease research. Animal experimentations fail due to the effects of the environment where the research is done and the outcomes, the great differences of animal diseases compared to human diseases, and the difference in the physiology and genetics (Karron).
Scientists use some animals to test out medicine but research says that animals do not get many of the diseases we do, such as Parkinson’s disease, major types of heart disease, many types of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV or schizophrenia. Therefore, medications that you would use on a person to cure these diseases aren’t completely beneficial to humans. Some animals are bred into
(WY Mak et. Al, 2014) discusses the concerns of the fact that many drugs that are successful in animal trials are not successful in clinical trials, most specifically, drugs used in cancer treatments. Animal models have been an important factor in the testing of a new drug before it is used in clinical trials, but many drugs that are approved in animal models are not successful in human models. It has been shown that 85% of early clinical trials for novel drugs are not successful and from the remaining 15%, only half are approved for human use. The reason there is a difference in results between animal models and clinical trials have to do with the inability of animals to identically mimic human body functions. An example of a trial that had a difference in results is the TGN1412 trial. TGN1412 was a drug used to treat diseases such as MS, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain cancers. Before used in clinical trials, this drug was first tested in mice. There were no complications shown in mice that would indicate complications in humans. Humans in clinical trials were given a dose 500 times lower than the dose given to mice and it resulted in catastrophic organ failure. Another study involving IPI-296 in patients with advanced chondrosarcoma was ended early due to the fact that it had no effect shown in clinical trials. When IPI-296 was used on mice, they were shown to have an increase in survival rate. This showed that the effects of the drug on animal models was different
In order to meet the FDA regulations, many companies would often expose thousands of animals such as rats, rabbits and dogs to harmful drugs. Most of these drugs are often rejected when exposed to actual human subjects. According to the FDA, “A new medicinal compound entering Phase 1 testing, often representing the culmination of upwards of a decade of preclinical screening and evaluation, is estimated to have only an 8 percent chance of reaching the market”(Critical Path Opportunities Reports - Challenges and Opportunities Report). In short, only 8 percent of drugs that are tested actually work on humans, and 92 percent fail when tested. This is simply because the species diverse too much and the results achieved from animal testing are at
Statistics have shown that animal based testing used to select drugs for human use are extremely unreliable. In fact, according to the FDA’s research, nine out of ten drugs deemed successful in animal tests fail in human clinical trials (“Limitations and Dangers” neavs.org) . This puts us in danger. Since a majority of medicines in doctor offices have been tested with animals, it could mean that potentially 90% of them could fail when tested on us. Such a medicine may cause drastic effects on a human. Not to mention, that there are several examples in history where animal testing has failed immensely. One of the better known
Relying on animal research and testing to protect and improve human health is not only unsafe, but also expensive, time-consuming, and unreliable. Problems of extrapolation, applying information from animal research to humans, are inevitable when researchers use animal models to study human diseases. Species differences in anatomy, organ structure and function, toxin metabolism, chemical and drug absorption, and mechanisms of DNA repair, can give us inadequate or erroneous information when we attempt to apply animal data to human diseases and drug responses. For example, penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs, aspirin is poisonous to cats, and the recalled diet drug phen-fen caused no heart damage in animals, while it did in humans. And despite millions of animals used and billions of taxpayer dollars spent on cancer research, roughly 95 percent of cancer drugs that enter human clinical testing fail while our incidences of cancer have continued to rise. Stated by Dr. Richard Klausner, former Director of the National Cancer Institute, “We have cured cancer in mice for decades—and it simply didn’t work in humans.”[1] Even chimpanzees, do not accurately predict results in humans. More than 80 HIV vaccines that have proven safe and efficacious in chimpanzees buy all have failed to protect or prove safe in humans.
They have the thought that by using animals for new treatments can give them advantages, but they forget one thing that animals body structures are entirely different from humans. That means, the new drugs may have positive effects on animals, but who knows whether they contain some reactive ingredients can cause harms for people or not. For example, from Dr. Richard Klausner, former director of the US National Cancer Institute made a statement about the failure using the drugs on humans. He said that medicine cured for cancer work on mice but