Essay On Animal Testing

Although animal testing in the United States is regulated by the AWA, this act does not supervise experiments on animals; thus, many animals are abused. While acting as

According to Humane Society International, most animals used in testing are usually deprived of water, force fed, and physically restrained for long periods of time while they are being tested.

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.

Every day, animals such as rabbits, chimpanzees, and mice take part of medical experimentation. “Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and mice are 98% genetically similar to humans. The United States and Gabon are the only two countries that allow experimentation on chimpanzees.” (The Jane Goodall Institute of Canada). What people don’t understand is that these animals contribute to medical discoveries regarding human health. Animals should be used for medical experimentation because they contribute to many cures and treatments that have saved lives, their genetic material appears to be similar to those of humans, they are similar to human beings in many ways, animals are the only organisms other than humans who we can experiment on, and the animals themselves benefit from the result of animal testing.

Every year, over a hundred million animals are burned, poisoned, and abused in laboratories for medical, drug, food, and cosmetic purposes. Animal testing is the use of living animals in experiments for research. Therefore, it is cruel and inhumane to use animals for such a purpose. Scientists conclude we are similar to animals, as chimpanzees share approximately ninety-nine percent of human DNA, but drug tests given to animals does not necessarily have the same outcomes on people. The Animal Welfare Act(AWA) regulates the treatment of animals in research, but many laboratory animals are excluded from the protections. As technology increases, an alternative testing methods now exists that can replace animals. Many people believe we aren’t superior

As you can see with these examples, it is absolutely necessary to use animals in research; for diseases that currently exist and for the ones yet to be discovered. There is no doubt that using animals to test products and to develop lifesaving medications and surgical procedures have improved our quality of life

Thousands of animals are used every year because of it. Scientists, researchers, and or other animal testers use a variety of different animals in their studies. The types of animals they use varies. They often use domestic animals, and primates. When scientists are conducting an experiment they choose the animal that would best relate to a human in that scenario. The animals test the formula while the scientist would conduct an experiment to see how the animal(s)would react to the substance. This is a cruel practice. In a way animals are very similar to humans. When scientists conduct experiments animals still feel pain like a normal person would. However, animals are still very different from humans and often do not provide strong evidence that the product being tested is deemed safe for human use. Overall animal testing is not as effective as many think it

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.

Many years ago, that argument would work. Perhaps in 1921 when they used the animals to discover insulin, or in 1951 when they discovered the polio vaccine and perfected it on animals. These days there are very many different ways to test cures for diseases and other medical experiments. Scientists can use the petri dish method, where they can actually use human cells. If we are making vaccines and cures for human, we should be testing them on humans.

Imagine yourself in a world with no animals – no birds chirping in the morning, no squirrels eating your flowers, no dogs or cats running around the house. Where did all of the animals go? They are all locked inside of cages in poor conditions in laboratories across the country. They wait in loneliness and terror to be called upon for testing. The conditions they wait in are enough to make them go insane. More than one hundred million animals die every year from animal testing. The Animal Welfare Act does not provide protection for ninety-nine percent of the animals used. The use of animals for the testing of products is a popular debate that has gained a lot of attention over the years. Scientists argue that testing products on animals is

Now it is not hard to at least understand why some people might be pro-animal testing when it comes to medical reasons. It could save human lives. But is that really true? There are a huge differences between humans and the animals that the products are tested on. For example, animals don’t develop the human AIDS syndrome. So, the use of animals for AIDS medications has been useless. Even though these differences do exist, there have been significant research benefits from using animal testing.

Imagine being a rabbit; a vertebrate and warm blooded species. Hopping around an open field and eating all greens. All of sudden, you were captured by an unknown human. You start to rattle around your cage figuring out how to escape. About “twenty-five million and 30 million” animals are exploited in experiments; “half are only used through education” (Donna 7).

The experiments on dogs where they had their pancreases removed directly resulted in the discovery of insulin, a hormone that is a crucial part of the treatment to diabetes (The Discovery of Insulin). Scientists used monkeys, and small rodents like mice and rats to preform tests on during the research to cure polio, which is essentially extinct from Earth. Animal research has led to treatments and vaccinations to measles, tetanus, smallpox, and many others. Chris Abee of the University of Texas’ Cancer Center for animal research said that, “We wouldn’t have a vaccine for hepatitis B without chimpanzees,” and added, “Our best hope for a hepatitis C vaccine is chimpanzees since there’s no other animal model for it. If a loved one of yours is one of the 15,000 people in the United States who die annually of hepatitis C, the research might be more important to you.” This is the common argument when considering whether or not animal testing is a right or wrong thing to do and if such testing should continue. The ideology that human life is more valuable than an animal’s life can be supported by philosopher Raymond Frey. He calls it the “unequal value thesis.” Frey believes that humans live a more valuable life than any other animal not just because of the fact that we are human, but the characteristics that make us humans. For example, our ability to come up with all sorts of thought out plans, we find enjoyment when doing a variety of activities, we develop deep complex relationships with different one another, and overall, our ability to think rationally. He thinks our moral dependence for living things depends on the value of their lives so as a result, when choosing between preforming experiments on human beings or animals, we are morally right to use animals as our

These kinds of concerns should give people, in certain instances, the right mind to protest against animal testing. But people might not want to protest or support animal rights because of the benefits animal testing has helped develop. Animal testing has helped create many life-saving cures and treatments. The CBRA, California Biomedical Research Association, stated that “nearly every major medical breakthrough in the last 100 years was depended on research that was collected from using animals” (11). Up until recently as of 1940, if a knee scrape were to become infected, it could be a life or death

Experiments on dogs led to the diabetes- fighting drug insulin, test on monkeys helped develop the polio vaccine, pig advance skin grafts for burn victims, and rats and mice been helpful to fight against cancer. Many researcher argue that testing on living organisms is necessary because they believe there are no laboratory alternatives that can replicate the human body. However, opponents argue that animal experimentation is cruel and inhumane, and that is unnecessary. Opponents also question the results that come from animal experimentation. They believe that animals are not reliable subjects because their bodies are not the same as humans bodies. The organs, nervous systems, and cellular makeup of animals are really different that experimentation would give inaccurate information. Animals testing is unnecessary because technology is so advanced now that a computer can help advance medical research and help cure diseases.