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How Do The Contributions Of Animal Testing To Global Medical

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How do the contributions of animal testing to global medical science justify whether or not it should be banned?
According to the Humane Society International (HSI), animal testing or animal experimentation for medical research refers to the experimentation on live animals for the purposes of investigation on diseases, medical treatments, or fundamental biology. Charles Gross, a former member of the History of Neuroscience committee of the global Society for Neuroscience, states that animals were used for improving medical knowledge even during the 2nd century when Galen, a Greek physician, utilized pigs for experimentation. Galen’s research led to a better understanding of how the brain and heart function in Western Europe (Gross). …show more content…

The NEAVS demonstrates that animal testing is often unsuccessful by reporting that 95% of all cancer drugs that work on animals fail in human testing (“Limitations”). The NEAVS further argues that sometimes drugs produced from animal experimentation actually harm humans as they report that an arthritis drug, Vioxx, was deemed safe by animal studies but was taken back in 2004 after causing 60,000 deaths in the US (“Limitations”). As shown, the NEAVS primarily argues that animal experimentation should be banned because it often fails to benefit humans (“Limitations”). Although the NEAVS poses strong information as to why animal testing is ineffective, information published by the NEAVS might only pose the negatives of animal testing as the organization works to end animal experimentation (“Limitations”). Gill Langley, a British scientist, agrees with the NEAVS that the high failure rate of animal testing proves that it should be banned. She supports her argument by stating that 100% of the AIDS vaccines developed using chimpanzees and monkeys failed to work in humans (Langley). Langley demonstrates the unsuccessfulness of animal testing by reporting that within 97 drugs for stroke that have passed animal tests, only two work.

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