Research Paper Animal Experimentation

You know those medicines that you can get at the Drug Store? Don’t you think that is the greatest medicine for headaches or allergy relief? Well, it was most likely tested on an animal and it could have killed them. Over 100 million animals are injured in a wide variety of ways in the U.S. alone . Some animals spend their entire lives in captivity constantly getting tortured or abused. Also, it has been proven that only 50% of the time animal testing also works on humans, so while we tested on animals and it worked for animals, you might as well flip a coin as to whether it will benefit people.

Around the world, millions of scientists conduct their studies by testing their research on animals. Many people believe that experimenting on animals is crucial to the advancement of medical discoveries. Studies show however, that animal experimentation is brutal and unnecessary. There are alternatives though: “replacement, reduction, and refinement” (Howard 2).

All drugs have dangers due to certain chemicals and substances. Because of animal testing, researchers have found another alternative to testing on humans.

Animal testing does not accurately predict possible reactions humans might have to animal tested drugs or cosmetics. ProCon.org says that 94% of drugs successful in animal testing fail during human trials. A drug released in 1999, called Vioxx, was tested and showed a positive effect on the hearts of mice, but ended up causing 27,000 heart attacks and cardiac deaths before being withdrawn from the market. A study by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, observed inflammatory conditions in ill humans, and experimented with 150 drugs, all of which were successful in animal tests, and found that none of them were successful in humans. A reason why animal testing is so inaccurate is because humans are very different. Despite having similar DNA to several animals, humans and animal test subjects differ in bone structure, organ size, and react in different ways to drugs that have been tested on animals. Paul Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University, said that "it's very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to achieve in the human.” With 94% of our drugs failing during human tests, Furlong is, with no doubt, correct. Thomas Hartung, Professor of evidence-based toxicology at Johns Hopkins University also stated that “we are not 70 kg rats.” A final failure in the accuracy of animal tested drugs is that because animal

Side effects on humans has become a major problem with animal testing. Studies by now have proven that some medication that are done with animal testing would work great on the animals but would failed on humans. 79% of doctors have stated that some side effects on humans cannot be curable. According to Animal Aid “Thousands of chimpanzees have been used in be curable. Useless experiments to find a cure for

Although large companies and those for animal testing might think that animal testing is essential for products to be declared safe for human use, that is entirely untrue. Animals are not humans, so testing is not accurate. They are also genetically modified and subjected to abnormal stress. According to the FDA, only 5-25% of animal tests and human tests agree, so there is little relevance to humans. Furthermore, only 9% of products tested on animals make it to market. This questions how safe the products really are. What is effective in animals isn’t effective for humans. For example, drugs such as Vioxx, Phenactin, and E-Ferol were not effective in 92% of humans. That is

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 -

“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.

Neurologist, Aysha Akhtar, stated that in an experiment with a drug named TGN 1412, the results from the mice, rabbits, and monkeys that it was used on was that the drug was non-toxic. The monkeys in the test were even given “500x” more the dosage amount of humans and when human volunteers in clinical trials were given the drug they almost instantly felt “ill” results. During the year 2003, Pharmaceuticals were told to stop trials of an Alzheimer’s vaccine that had been curing the disease in mice but turned out to cause brain inflammation in humans (Akhtar, Aysha). These kinds of results often get looked over because people think that animals, for the most part, have the same anatomy as humans. Even when results in animal testing do point out flaws of the drugs, we can’t fully rely on the results because they may not be harmful in humans. For example, a drug used to treat leukemia, Gleevec, was almost thrown away because it was found to cause “liver toxicity” in dogs but not humans. This was also true with the drug Cyclosporine, which is used to treat autoimmune disorders and given to patients who have organ donations to prevent rejections (Akhtar,

Medicines used on humans have saved hundreds-of-millions of lives and has prolonged the average human lifespan by nearly 50 years. Many of these medicines had to be tested on animals to make sure they are safe to use on humans. Without the use of animal testing, these medical miracles would not have been possible. Animal test subjects have historically been critical in furthering our understanding of physiology, health, and disease, and cessation of this could risk harm to humans and lead to a decrease in the speed of new medical advancements.

Animals have been test subjects for many years for many products for safety issues before use on humans. These tests are unreliable they do not accurately portray how the material or drug interacts in the human body. Because of this, many products are put on the market and found to be very harmful to humans. Most of the drugs end up being discontinued or relabeled due to harmful side effect. The reason for some of the unreliability is animal test is the condition the animal is under, like stress. Stress on the animal can raise the heart rate, blood pressure and raise certain hormone levels, making the drug work in a

Since 1922 various animals have been used for experimentation regarding cosmetics, medicine, and genetic modification. The idea of testing on animals opposed to humans was applied because it allowed us to test different products to insure their use is safe, but it protected humans from suffering possible consequences. Testing on animals was thought to be an extraordinary advancement, which could be used in the humans benefit. However, this once glorified discovery, may not be as beneficial as first thought. “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 that are approved for human use, half are relabeled because of side effects that were not identified in animal tests.” (Greenhaven Press) This comment from the Federal Drug Administration explains that in fact, that more than 92% of test fail or contain errors when turned to human usage. Perhaps, the reason for the unreliable tests is because humans and the animals that are used for testing, are completely different species. An example of this is that humans only share about 67% homologous genes with mice, an animal commonly used in animal testing. Meaning, 33% of homologous genes mice pertain, are different than a human’s. This leaves room for those medical errors and reactions that can be harmful to humans. In the article “Problems with Animal Research” edited by Sylvia Engdahl, they

In many countries throughout the world testing drugs on animals is legal. In fact, medications and other substances like household chemicals will not reach the market unless they are tested and proved to be safe for consumers (ILAR 21). Thus, animal testing is crucially important for exploring maladies and evaluating the safety of medications.

Animal models in experimentation serve in an imperative role. Currently, substances intended for human use (drugs or devices) must be tested in an animal model first to determine if they must be adjusted, denied or approved. Research conducted on diseased animals provide insight to progression of similar diseases in humans, improve knowledge of biological responses to various substances and devices. They also result in the production of various products such as food additives, agrochemicals, vaccines, implants and pharmaceuticals. “It has been estimated that more than 1,200,000 species of animals have been described, but 97% of the animals used for biomedical purpose belong to only 10 of them. They are rat, mouse, rabbit, chicken, dog, guinea pig, pig, hamster, monkey, and cat”(Pal). Roughly, 95% of studies are conducted in mice (Dey). A different species is used only when it is a more closely matching system to the equivalent in humans. Many things must be considered when choosing a model for research; availability, anatomic

Animal experimentation has been credited for the medicines made to assist diabetes, vaccines for smallpox, deep brain stimulation for parkinson’s disease, and many more along with millions of dollars spent on failed experiments, millions of animal deaths a year, misleading data and an overall bigger loss than gain. The main point of animal testing is to benefit the safety and overall health of humans, but testing on non humans to learn about humans doesn’t contribute to the cause. Humans have the voice protective of their own lives and demand rights, though every living creature deserves the right to life and to safety. The way these animals are being treated is heinous and insulting to the human race, as it subsides our morals and some