CON Position: Proponents /Perspectives Against: While the pros to animal research are positives on humans, it is negatively affecting the animals themselves. Using animals for medical research is inhumane because they are left in these awful conditions. These animals are being mistreated in captivity because humans need them for their own research. The animals used in these experiments are treated very poorly because, they are subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, deprived of food and water, excessive physical restraint, and may acquire infections and other wounds while in captivity (“Animal Testing”, 2017). Animals like these are burned, choked by CO2 and even left days without food or water. Sometimes we just test to see what the LD50 is for these animals, over 97,000 animals were killed just testing to find the LD50 from these animals. The LD50 is just a test to find out how much of one substance will kill 50% of the population. These animals are harmed for no reason because, most of the time it does not even help humans. Animal tests while have been successful in the past, more than likely won’t lead to successful transition into humans. Being used in medical research for years animals have led to some successes and scientific breakthroughs, but most of the time end up failing and hurting the animals instead of helping humans. Studies by the Food and Drug Administration found that about 92 of 100 drugs that passed the animal tests had failed in humans (“Top Five Reasons to Stop Animal Testing,” 2017). Humans have become very developed medically over the last hundreds of years or so. To become more advanced has come with a drawback, harming millions of innocent animals. Most of the time when doing these types of research we end up finding something that would work or barley work in animals but will never work in humans. Animal research has led to very few breakthroughs compared to the many that have been attempted. With such a low success rate it seems we should be able to find a better more efficient way to find a cure rather than using animals.
There are alternative options for medical research as animals have failed us for hundreds of attempts. One other type of testing is called vitro
Although there have been significant medical breakthroughs based in animal testing and experimentation, animal testing is a poor method of science as it is largely useless and
Worldwide, there has always been a plethora of issues concerning whether animals should or should not be used for biomedical research. There are some advocating for the best and most-advanced medicine for the people; with disregard for the animal’s health. They believe people’s needs should be the first concern. However, others put the animal’s health first. If the animal is not in safe conditions, then it does not matter what medicine advances might be discovered. Biomedical research is defined as “The application of the natural sciences, especially the biological and physiological sciences, to clinical medicine” (“Biomedicine.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/biomedical.). Without biomedical research on animals, modern medicine would not exist. Animal testing has enabled the findings of treatments for cancer, antibiotics for infections, and preventatives for illnesses. For these reasons, animal testing should be used in the process of developing biomedical research.
Although animals testing help humans in many ways it can be cruel and inhuman to the animals being tested on. Depending on which lab the end up in they could be treated poorly and starved. They could be “inflicted with burn wounds and pain to test for a healing process” (Brown, 2017). This is cruel and just wrong for many reasons. “When testing to evaluate irritation caused by
Scientists have been using animals to test medical treatments that could be used on humans, if it does well with the animal. Testing on an animal could help find a new discovery, but it could also put the animal in danger. Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned, and abused in US labs every year. A 2013 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) found that nearly 150 clinical trials of treatments to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients have been undertaken, and all of them failed, despite being successful in animal tests. Animals should not be used to test medical procedures and treatments that would be later on used for humans.
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.
There are over 26 million different types of animal being tested on for research each year in the United States. Animals are used for testing every year for human research. Different animals go through serious pain, in order for humans to facilitate growth in different fields of study. Many animals are used in order to study diseases and potential cures for the diseases. New research chemicals are tested on animals with similar structures to humans, to see if the medicine can help with certain diseases. Tons of scientific advancement has taken place because of animal testing. Without animal testing, many diseases would still exist, without a safe way to test for potential cures. The issue at hand is the type of treatment that animals have to endure because of the different testing methods. They are treated very poorly, go through intense suffering, and normally have very poor living conditions. A pro to animal testing is that many cures and different medicines have been developed through animal testing. Without animal testing, many diseases would still exist without cures. Secondly, animals have a much shorter life span than humans do, so scientists can study the results through the whole life span of the animal. With humans, it is hard to do a full test because we have such high lifespans, while animals tend to live a lot less longer. Thirdly, many animals have been saved because of animal testing. Many diseases animals deal with now have vaccines and cures, as a result of animal testing. Without it, many animals would have rabies or other types of virus that can be detrimental to the animal’s health. On the contrary, a con to animal testing would be the pain many animals go through as a result of the testing. The tests are experimental, so we don’t know exactly what the chemical drug will do to the animal. Many cases have turned bad and many animals have died as a result, or gone through extensive pain. Next, there are many alternative methods of experimental testing that doesn’t require animals. As a result, why are we still using animals for testing when there are other ways to do it. Finally, animals are different from humans, so they make poor testing subjects. We can’t know for sure how the research
“Animal testing allows researchers to initially gauge the safety of drugs prior to commencing trials on humans” (Murnaghan, 2017, p. 1). This allows for a decrease in human harm and human lives are saved. A majority of animals used are mammals with a DNA structure close to humans. “This is extremely useful because it gives much more realistic results as to how a human would be affected without having to endanger human lives” (Pros, 2014, p. 1). Alternative methods don’t simulate humans the same way as animals. It wouldn’t make sense to test drugs and products on something that wouldn’t represent humans the most.
There are many pro and cons with the matter. A pro may be considered to be that “Animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments,” according to an article. A con can be considered to be that “Animals can suffer like humans do, so it is speciesism to experiment on them while we refrain from experimenting on humans.” (Should Animals be used for Scientific or Commercial Testing? 2017) Using animals can cause scientist to use misleading information and avoid finding cures, just because drugs pass tests on animals doesn’t mean that it is safe for humans to use either. Even though the human body anatomy is occasionally closer to the test subjects doesn’t mean that the results are accurate. This is taking advantage of animals when scientist use misleading information to do more test on
Interestingly animal research has created advancement in the understanding and treatment of conditions such as breast cancer, brain injury, childhood leukemia, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and many more. Additionally, other people feel that animals themselves benefit from the results of animal testing. Millions of animals have received vaccines for rabies, distemper, canine parvo virus and other diseases as a result of animal testing and research. The issue with this reasoning is that there is not any regard for the animals’ life when there is alternative means of testing. The value that we place on the lives of animals should be the same as what we place on human
Animals do not suffer from the same diseases that us humans have, for example curing heart failure induced by cutting a dogs aorta will not help to cure heart failure caused by a build-up of cholesterol in human arteries. We waste animal lives everyday and for what? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has noted that 92 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. And of the small percentage of drugs approved for human use, half end up being relabeled because of side effects that were not identified in tests on animals. This makes it extremely dangerous to humans, because animal testing is not dependable, it can cause serious side effects to humans that weren’t an issue to the animals during testing.
Some people might argue that there is no better alternatives for testing then animals. Over the years, however, science has created many alternatives for animal use in testing. One alternative is, using donated human tissue and organs. With this method less animals will die for human research. This has also been proven to be up to 20% more accurate than an animal testing (Neavs). Another alternative would be microdosing. Microdosing would take human volunteers and give them small doses of drugs high enough to cause an effect but not high enough to affect the entire body (The Hastings Center). By using these alternatives, less animals will be used
Animal testing is outdated, there are several things that show how unreliable the results are. The outcome of the effect on a rabbit, and the effect on a human could be two completely different things, but society would not know until the product was released to the public. Society no longer needs animal testing because there have been several alternative methods that have proven to be just as, if not more effective than actually experimenting on animals. Animal testing not needed, and is not morally
“We have made a way from studying humans… we all drank Kool-Aid on that one included…The problem is that (animal testing) hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem…We need to refocus and adapt ne methodologies for use in humans to understand diseases in biology in humans” (Dr.Elias Zerhouni). Animal testing is when animals are taking from their habitat and put in cages in a laboratory. They wait in the cages until scientist have to do scientific testing and commercial testing on them. These poor animals get tortured just so a company can take out a new hair spray. We should not use animals for scientific or commercial testing.
Charles Darwin, a renowned scientist, wrote to the Oxford zoologist Ray Lankester in 1871 : “You ask about my opinion on vivisection (animal testing). I quite agree…it is a subject that makes me sick with horror, so I will not say another word about it else I shall not sleep to-night, ” So you’d think, that nearly 150 years after Darwin’s words there would be some change in opinion. You’d think that when a scientist’s idol shows absolute disgust for animal testing they’d stop, especially as there are more effective and money-saving methods today. Experimenting on animals is cruel and morally wrong. Even as I speak, animals are being crammed into cages in the name of medical ‘research’. Animals are very different from humans, their anatomical structures are also different, so why test on animals when it the drugs they are being tested with are meant for HUMANS? What kind of sick logic is this?
First of all, there are a number of points opposing that animal research should be banned. Comparing with doing research on human, there is a safer ways to research on animals which has the same condition or symptoms. Chi-Chao Chan(2016)raises that with the rapid development of medical biology,