Animal Testing Limitations

For many years, the field of science has used animals in medical experiments worldwide, because of this innocent animals are being killed everyday. They are being tested with new drugs, new treatments, and by many makeup companies. Connecticut recently celebrated the passage of the “Beagle Freedom Law”, a law that requires laboratories to work with charities and rescue groups to find homes for research cats and dogs. Animals are being tested so humans do not have to be but animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings, although animals are the closest thing to humans. Most experiments involving animals are flawed, wasting the lives of innocent animal subjects. Over 100 million animals suffer a year from testing. Testing animals is a lot more expensive than alternative methods and it is wasting government research dollars. Animal testing is not only a bad idea, but it is also inhuman and it should not be tolerated. The FDA should stop allowing animal testing. An animal does not give out the same results on a test than a human would.

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 are living creatures and we should not experiment on them, forcing them to live with injuries or illnesses: It is wrong. We should not be able to manipulate them and hurt them forcing them to live with injuries or illnesses we inflicted without them being able to fight back. They suffer everyday being held in small cages with no freedom until they find their untimely end most likely being euthanized. Testing on animals is not even a reliable study; this is something that the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) argues. The AAVS is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to advocacy for animals and eliminating animals from all experimentation in the USA. The AAVS believe “animals have the right not to be exploited for science and we should not have to choose between helping humans and harming animals.” (2013, paragraph 9) Using animals in experimentations is questioned more and more every year because of the reduced reliability shown over time. Some scientific limitations are that even though a treatment or medicine may work on an animal the outcome on a human may be entirely different. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says, “nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” (2013, paragraph 16) Studies using animals are flawed because of the differences in physiology, metabolism, anatomy, and genetics. Helen Marston brings up a

Animal testing, as previously mentioned, is not as reliable as it is made out to be. It is extremely difficult to replicate the complexity of a disease in humans and translate it to an animal through artificial induce it into an animal. Even if the disease is successfully replicated animals often don't react the same to medications as humans do (Akhtar, 1). The best example of this is that of Thalidomide, which despite animal testing caused deformations in babies born from women who took this drug. After the incident, producers retested the drug on animals, still not finding said deformities in any of the animals it was tested on (Greek, 1). In the article “How Reliable is Animal Testing” Author C Ray Greek makes the statement “An animal that responds like humans to one medication will not necessarily respond the same way to another medicine”, which was the case in the incident with the Thalidomide. This oversight when testing animals can lead to unforeseen fatalities and did lead to the deformation and in many cases death of thousands of babies affected by Thalidomide (Greek, 1). Animal testing is not only unreliable but in some cases even harmful and often does not lead to break through discoveries in the scientific field. In the article “The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation”

Testing drugs on an animal is not only wrong, but also inaccurate. There are drugs tested on animals and thought to yield positive results, however “92% of experimental drugs deemed to be effective fail in a human trial.” Such mistakes have led to dangerous drugs being sold off the shelf. The inconsistency of effective drugs isn't helped by the undesirable living situations of some of the testing subjects. Many subjects live with others that are sick or in places that are unsanitary, which also hinders the results of the tests (Animal Testing - ProCon.org.).

95% of drugs fail in human trials despite promising results in animal tests. This is because of the different genes between a human and an animal. The failure of the drugs can also be caused due to the fact that out of 93 dangerous drug side effects, only 19% could have been predicated by animal tests. Another piece of evidence that has been brought to the attention of many is that the testing of animals is a waste. Only 6% of 4,300 international companies involved in drug development have registered a new drug with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 1950. Even those drugs that are approved are not universally effective due to individual reactions, the top ten highest-grossing drugs in the U.S. only help between 1 in 4 and 1 in 25 people who take them. The last reason why animal testing should be reconsidered is common sense but overlooked. Animals are much more different from humans than imagined. Animals are incapable of being diagnosed of the same diseases that humans are. Their bodies do not allow them to have illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease, major types of heart disease, many types of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV or schizophrenia. A simple drug like aspirin is toxic to many animals, including cats, mice and rats and would not be on our pharmacy shelves if it had been tested according to current animal testing

We cannot overlook the factor that this process of using animals in experiments against their will subjects them to a lot of stress which in hindsight could tamper with the results making them less accurate and unreliable. As found on the Food and Drug Administration, Non-human creatures cannot contract the HIV virus yet it is considered deadly in humans. A medication that appeared promising in treating rhesus macaques in animals was also ineffective in humans. Animal experiments should stop because alternatives have been widely discovered (Christopher 40). In addition to this, scientists have developed a lot more in the campaign to terminate use of animals in experiments (Hackmann 40). Plastic models and computers can effectively substitute use of animals in experiments. In vitro examination: IC50 assesses how much chemicals can be to cells hence can replace LC50 examination that oversees a chemical given to a number of animals to determine what amount is able to kill more than half of the all population of the animals. Another method is the FDA, which is a technique that provides credible information on how humans can be widely affected by new drugs (Food and Drug Administration 77).

To begin with, animal experimentation provides unreliable test results because of the differences between animals and humans. In the article, Animal Testing is Not Essential for Medical Research, Ray C. Greek and Jean Swingle Greek said,”More than half of the medications released between 1976 and 1985 were taken off the market or relabeled because dangerous side effects were discovered that had not been found in animal experiments.” Many drugs have been found to have unpredicted side effects so testing on animals just shows researchers what the drug would do to animals, not humans. Since the point of animal testing is to test the effectiveness and results of a drug, it

By experimenting on animals, innocent lives are being taken. A 2009 animal study concluded that animals are killed after the experiments, and many animals grieve during the studies. Humans do not want to go through major suffering, so why are animals being forced to? Segregating against animals because they are different from humans is like segregating against humans with severe mental impairments. In addition, there have been numerous failures with animal testing over the years. Billions of dollars are wasted on non-helpful experiments when trying to find new cures for humans. Also, testing animals could mislead researchers to ignoring potential medical breakthroughs. For example, Aspirin is highly deadly for a few animal species, but aspirin helps humans. As stated, animal experimentation is weak testing for science due to every one of the issues that outcome from this type of

Also animal testing normally will not yield the same results it would on humans. (Zurolo 3) Not only that, animal based tests take too long & are expensive on average. One such case where a drug was safe for animals but not for humans was a drug called Vioxx. In 2005 ,researchers found the drug had a heart protective effect in mice & other animals but the exact opposite in humans and caused heart problems. Once they found out that it caused heart problems in humans they ignored this very fact and instead pointed to the animal tests insisting it was “safe” and the evidence is there. (news -

Animal testing is essential to medical research. There is no other way of making sure medication is safe than testing on a living organism. Living organisms have a circulatory system which is how hormones are distributed through the body. The only way to be sure what a drug will do to a living system is to test it on one. Other methods of research on drugs just are not effective. A circulatory system is necessary determine the viability and effects of hormones. For example insulin was only able to be tested on live animals because it is a hormone carried in the blood. In addition animal life spans are much shorter than human life spans. The lifespan of rats is only

Animal tests a lot of the time are unreliable, they make those human trials all the more risky. (Animal Testing Is Bad Science: Point/Counterpoint). A static taken from the Food and Drug Administration shows that more than half, 92%, of all the drugs that are safe and work on animals, DON’T work on humans. Also the 8% of drugs that have been authorized for human consumption have had to been relabeled because of the many side effects that did not show up in the tests on animals. Drugs like Vioxx, Oraflex, Suprol and a handful of many others have been recalled in recent years because of the reactions that humans had when taking them. A paper published from the Yale School of Medicine, “Where is the evident That Animal Research Benefits Humans?’, goes on to explain that in animal used studies there was very little to no evidence that showed experimentation on animals has ever benefited humans. Fact is, that many advances in the medicine and health field are because of human studies, one example of that is the discovery of the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease and also the development of X-rays. (Animal Testing Is Bad Science:

My first reason is that animal testing harms animals. Over 100 million animals each year are burned, crippled, poisoned, and abused. That means 100 million animals torchered just to see if medicine works. Although, some people say that it's the only way to test if medicine works they are wrong. Scientists can use robots, machines, and volunteers to see if medicine works. Animal testing is harmful to animals should not be used.

One of the major reasons is that the testing does not usually work out. The thing with using animals to test products that will be used on or with humans is that the animals have a different genetic make up than people do. This can cause problems when determining whether or not a product will help or harm humans. An example of one product would be aspirin. This product is used by humans to relieve headaches but it is seriously harmful for some animals. Another medical product is a drug called FK-506. This drug helps lower the chance of a donated organ being rejected in its new body. This drug however was almost dismissed because it failed some animal testing ( Ballinger). With this in mind, who knows how many other life changing drugs have been dismissed because it failed animal testing. A lot of the time when products go to human trial, they fail. One author stated statistics and reasonings as to why products fail human trials, “up to 92 percent of experimental drugs that are safe for animals fail human trials because it is either ineffective or dangerous. Even primates, who have very similar genetic make-up to humans, fell short in making drugs completely safe for people. Consequently, because results of these trials are not always accurate, this process ends up being wasteful, expensive and ineffective” (Yashiki). This just shows that alternate ways should

According to the Food and Drug Administration, 92% of drugs passed animal tests, but failed to work on humans. The humans who had used the animal certified drugs used on them, may also have an increased chance of getting life-threatening diseases or worse, death. For example, a study done by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that, “ Drugs intended to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients, previously tested in mice, failed in nearly 150 human critical trials” (livescience). This drug didn’t help the patients but probably even worsened their conditions. There are many other studies that show that animal experimentation is ineffective and there are places where the alternatives to it are