History of Animal Testing 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.

From when you are a baby to when you are an adult animal testing is used in your everyday products. From the Pampers you put on as a baby and the Johnson and Johnson you are washed with. To when you are older the Febreeze, Sunsilk, and Gillette you use.( Companies That do Test on Animals) Animal testing surrounds you in every act of life. “The guess is around 100 million animals are used worldwide in animal testing.” (Animal Rights) Animal testing is rooted from natural curiosity. How the insides of a living organism operate and look is an interesting idea. Because of the fact that dissection of humans was illegal by the Roman Church, animals were the second best option for knowledge of living organisms. (Animal Testing) The debate

Animal testing is a common practice in current life that is necessary to ensure the safety of the humans that will be using the tested product. There are many good and bad aspects of animal testing, but the pros clearly outweigh the cons. Animal testing has been around since ancient times when animals were dissected to gain knowledge about the body and organs. The animals killed from animal testing make up a tiny percentage of the total animals killed every year. When just considering the animals used for food compared to the animals used for testing, testing animals make up a mere 2.6 percent of that number. Public safety far outweighs the lives of the small amount of animals killed.

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

Animal testing has been bad of the years and it can even be dated back to the ancient times of the greek. Physicians would dissect animals with the pure interest to obtain knowledge. But even then, one such physician stated that he would rather use a pig as his subject because he wanted to.The ethics of animal testing has always been questioned. Humans do not want to think of animals as on the same level of us. The similarity is terrifying and makes the cruelness obvious. In the 16 century it has been recorded that early vivisectionists, scientists who perform experiments and operations on live animals, did not consider animals to be of the same lineage of us and barely cared for them.The remaining are used as test dummies for products.

Animal testing is a substantial controversy across the nation. According to Rush, Catherine M. et al. “Animal Models to Investigate the Pathogenesis of Rheumatic Heart Disease.” Frontiers in Pediatrics 2 (2014): 116. PMC. Web. 27 Oct. 2016., animal testing has been around for quite some time. Her article states that “Animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, (384 – 322 BC) and Erasistratus, (304 – 258 BC), performed experiments on living animals. Likewise, Galen (129 – 199 / 217 AD), a Greek physician who practiced in Rome and was a giant in the history of medicine, conducted animal experiments to advance the understanding of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), an Arab physician in twelfth century Moorish Spain, introduced animal testing as an experimental method for testing surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.”

The term “animal testing” refers to procedures performed on animals for the benefit of humans. An estimated 25 million animals are tested on each year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing. It is used for biomedical research, medical usage, behavioral research, cosmetics, and the list goes on. Research on living animals has been practiced since at least 500 B.C. Many argue that animal testing is necessary for research, but with the medical technology we have today, this has been proven incorrect. The cost of animal testing is hundreds of thousands per year in the U.S. Animal testing is cruel and should not be allowed because it is abusive, expensive, and there are substitutes.

Animal testing is used to see the effects of products before the products are put up for human consumption. With this testing, thousands and thousands of animals are kept in cages and subjected to pain and isolation every year. Even though these animals endure this extreme pain for the safety of humans, results are rarely the same in animals as they are in humans. Even though animal testing is deemed as bad science, people say that every major medical advance is because of animal testing. This is not true, since we have vaccines, CAT scans, MRI, and many more advances that are not due to animal testing. Do we even need animal testing? Animal testing is misleading, cruel, archaic, and is not essential to medical research.

Not only do the animals live in unfavorable conditions, they are often burned, poisoned, abused, and crippled then left in their cages to wait for the pain to subside. The AWA does all it can to prevent the harm of testing subjects, but most often, vets are not even on the scene of testing, though certain laws require it. According to the Humane Society, “registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12,000 animals” (11 Facts about Animal Testing). Pregnant creatures are sometimes killed so testing can be done of the fetus; testing the effect certain drugs would have on a human fetus; there is no crueler action than to take a child from its’

Just in the United States, “there are about 26 million different species, from dogs to birds, being used every year for medical and science related testing” (“Animals in Science / Research”). Throughout the process of testing, “monkeys are addicted to drugs, cats are deafened and have holes drilled into their skulls, sheep and pigs have their skin burned off, and rats have their spinal cords crushed” (“Animals in Medical Experiments”). As a result, animals face cruel conditions and have no way of fighting back. Although medical testings on animals may cure the deadliest diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis, the abuse and mistreatment these animals face while testing medicines should be deemed inhumane, and such practices should be banned in the United States.

Animal testing has many advantages that have made a better society for people. Animal testing can be defined as, “the use of non-human animals in research and development projects, esp. for purposes of determining the safety of substances such as foods or drugs” (“Dictionary 1”). Animal testing is literally how it sounds to others. Animals are being tested on in order to try different products made by scientists in order to better the society.

Animal testing is an experiment used in science where animals are alive and are forced to go through pain and distress. Animals are being tested constantly in laboratories where they stay in cold cages. Humans believe that animal testing is beneficial because animals are put to the test to develop medicines such as Abilify that treats schizophrenia and bipolar disorder where the drug is tested on rats, dogs, monkeys, and rabbits, furthermore, animals are also tested for cosmetics, for instance, Maybelline. Testing on animals is not necessary because it causes suffering, it is unethical, and it has been unsuccessful for human medicine.

Animal testing can have a different meaning for each individual, it can be both cruel and helpful in everyday life.

While opinions on the matter differ greatly, animal testing has been ongoing since at least 500 B.C., and frankly, old habits are harder to break than new ones (animal-testing.procon.org). Like the extensively tested mouse in the short story “Flowers for Algernon”, many creatures are experimented on daily. The mouse, Algernon, went through daily tests that displayed his artificially increased intelligence; that is, until his foreseen but nonetheless tempestuous plummet in health (Keyes, Flowers for Algernon). Animals should not be used for experimental research potentially harmful to them because it is unnecessary with our advanced technology, expensive, and testing is often followed by misled

“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.