Animal Research And Testing For Human Health Essay

It is no secret that millions of animals a year are used for medical experimentation. One study “found the number of animals tested rose from 1,566,994 in 1997 to 2,705,772 in 2012” (Casey). It is my belief that researchers use virtue theory to defend their experimentations. While animal activists approach experimentation through the ethics of care. I am against animal experimentation, but I will also provide insight into why people believe it is ethically just.

You know those medicines that you can get at the Drug Store? Don’t you think that is the greatest medicine for headaches or allergy relief? Well, it was most likely tested on an animal and it could have killed them. Over 100 million animals are injured in a wide variety of ways in the U.S. alone . Some animals spend their entire lives in captivity constantly getting tortured or abused. Also, it has been proven that only 50% of the time animal testing also works on humans, so while we tested on animals and it worked for animals, you might as well flip a coin as to whether it will benefit people.

Test subjects in medical experiments have always been a controversial topic, but this argument is often only thought of when animals come in to play. What about the humans who get tested on unwillingly, or people who do not possess the capability to consent to such procedures? They are also in need of someone to look out for them. Throughout time, many governments have done extreme testing to move forward their population’s health and for what they call the greater good. Yet, more often than not, these test have no rules or regulations. A moral code has been established slowly after many of these ghastly occurrences became known. Even to this day, we still have people trying to bypass ethical codes such as the Nuremberg code and the

Animal testing does not accurately predict possible reactions humans might have to animal tested drugs or cosmetics. ProCon.org says that 94% of drugs successful in animal testing fail during human trials. A drug released in 1999, called Vioxx, was tested and showed a positive effect on the hearts of mice, but ended up causing 27,000 heart attacks and cardiac deaths before being withdrawn from the market. A study by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, observed inflammatory conditions in ill humans, and experimented with 150 drugs, all of which were successful in animal tests, and found that none of them were successful in humans. A reason why animal testing is so inaccurate is because humans are very different. Despite having similar DNA to several animals, humans and animal test subjects differ in bone structure, organ size, and react in different ways to drugs that have been tested on animals. Paul Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University, said that "it's very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to achieve in the human.” With 94% of our drugs failing during human tests, Furlong is, with no doubt, correct. Thomas Hartung, Professor of evidence-based toxicology at Johns Hopkins University also stated that “we are not 70 kg rats.” A final failure in the accuracy of animal tested drugs is that because animal

Something that cannot be overlooked is the inaccuracy between animal trials and human trials. In a document released by the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) it was reveled that more than 80 HIV aids vaccinations passed animal trials with flying colours, only to later fail to treat a single human correctly. Dr. Richard Klausner the former director of the national cancer institute had said the following in relation to the issue “we have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply does not work in humans.”

are not able to give consent for this as would be required of a human. Other

The majority of animal research is not drug testing but simple research and genetically modifying animals. Half of all animal experiments are conducted at universities and colleges by students. Animal use in scientific testing can be dated back to at least as far as the 17th century with the Harvey experiments aiming to demonstrate blood circulation. The Cruelty to Animals Act was passed in 1876 by parliament. This was the first legislation aimed at regulating animal experiments. Many tests often produce inaccurate or misleading results, even if a product has blinded an animal it can still be marked to you. Animal testing is no longer a justified method of testing for science for the fact of the new innovative cross-disciplinary technology,

At this moment, tens of millions of animals, such as rats, rabbits, monkeys, cats, and dogs, plus more, are being locked inside cages in labs all throughout the country due to being used in horrific experiments. These animal experiments are used to develop and enhance new drugs and to test the safety of products before being used on humans. Many of these experiments inflict pain to the animals and decrease their satisfactory of life. More than a hundred million animals suffer and die every year in the U.S. from medical education and clinical experiments, as well as merciless chemical, drug, food, and cosmetic tests. Animals also suffer and die in classroom biology experiments and dissection.

An estimated fifty-six billion animals are slaughtered every year just for human consumption. The consumption of these animals is now redundant and wasteful because meat and dairy products are not necessary for the majority of human’s survival. Humans should stop eating animals and animal by-products because it is morally wrong, this is due to the fact that many of the animals humans consume can feel pain. Humans should stop eating other animals if it is not essential for their survival. In addition, the conditions that animals are subjected to in farms and slaughterhouses are harsh. Moreover, the amount of grain that is required to feed farmed animals is high and can be used to feed humans instead of animals that will inevitably be killed

Is it fair to do experiments on a helpless animal for the benefits of human beings? No,it is not fair to do experiments on helpless animals. Animal testing is when cruel and harmful experiments are done on innocent animals for specific reasons such as saving human lives. In animal testing, they take these innocent little animals and run horrible,cruel, and graphic test on them. "An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing." (Humane Society International n.p.). So many different kinds of animals are taken captive to be tested on these gruesome experiments. There are many experiments

Within the European Union, over 12 million animals are used for animal testing yearly. Over 3 million of these laboratory rabbits were used in Great Britain. In 2014, around 834,453 animals total were used for laboratory testing in the United States; 18% (150,344) of the animals tested on were rabbits. With this information at hand, we can see that rabbits are commonly used in different laboratories around the world. This paper will be going over the treatment of these animals in average facilities and the impact these animals have on our society.

Practices used by early Greek physician scientists, such as Aristotle and Erasistratus, are still practiced to this day. One in particular is the use of animals in experimentation. Times have changed and technology has improved since they walked this earth. In recent developments, alternative methods for animal testing have been getting more funding, attention and research done in hopes to improve the scientific community. Testing on animals comes with many risks such as missed side effects due to the differences in animal and human DNA, which leads to wasted money. It also affects animals; over half of the animals used in animal experimentation are killed simply for the experimentations sake. Issues like these

Using animals for research is not reliable in predicting the outcome of new chemicals on the human body system. According to American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Nine out of ten drugs that appear promising in animals studies go on to fail in human clinical trials.” That indicates that almost ninety percent of traditional animal experiments fail in human trials. Although humans are similar to animals, they still do not have the exact genetic make up as animals. American Anti-Vivisection Society claims that, “Even the same species have similar differences that can be found among different genders, breeds, ages and weight ranges, and ethnic backgrounds.” For example, humans react to new products differently because nobody is genetically the same. Some people experience the therapeutic effect of a drug and then others may have an allergic reaction to the drug. Even in the human species researchers see that not all drugs or products produce the same ideal results that are expected. If there were such wide variations of results between the same species why would it be logical to test products intended for human use on animals? This is a question that most advocates for alternative methods to animal testing would ask.

Heart attacks, bladder failure, and lack of medical cures are all very serious problems that are killing people today. How can doctors learn more about these medical difficulties? Through animal testing doctors can obtain valid results regarding these medical problems and create cures for people with many other medical difficulties. The progression of medicine and the day to day life styles of the general population rely on the ethical practice of animal testing. The alternatives to animal testing are not very valid. “Artificial testing with computer simulations, have not reached a technological level at which these simulations can be trusted to give a valid results to experiments(3).” Also, human testing has many restrictions and

“Beauty without cruelty” is the outcry that can be heard from animal right activists around the world. The FDA does not require companies to perform tests on animals but if the cosmetic product contains chemicals that can be seen as toxins, testing becomes a necessity. There are currently thirteen safety tests that are performed on animals.