preview

Should Cows Be Used In Research Essay

Decent Essays

When one thinks of cows, or bos taurus, words such as meat, and dairy pop into mind. A word that is rarely ever associated with cows is research. It is not commonly known that cows are used in research that benefits humans. Cows are used as models of human conditions by biomedical scientists, this occurred because the similarities cattle share with humans. Cows are used in the research of reproductive physiology, heart experiments, and autism, because of the use of animals in research we are closer to finding solutions to almost all maladies that plague humans and animals alike. Artificial insemination, was developed as solution to the many problems faced by the cattle/dairy industry. Problems such as the need for genetic improvement and …show more content…

There is an extremely broad spectrum for autism thus making it harder to find treatments and medicine for it. Suffering from Asperger's spectrum disorder, Temple Grandin found that observing cows helped soothe her. On her Aunt Polly’s farm Temple noticed that when the cows become agitated they would be put in the compression machine. Temple discovered that the application of deep pressure helps calm the agitated cows, upon further investigation she found that cows respond differently to the different pressure that is applied. The cows high stimuli to being touched reminded her of how children with autism react to being touched and she created a crude version for herself to test. Surprisingly she found that that pressure when she was agitated reduced her anxiety within seconds (Edelson 14) Seeing this she quickly realized that cows share similar traits with people who suffer from autism. This encouraged scientists to look outside the box when researching autism. This resulted in the ground breaking discovery that children who have autism When cows are agitated it causes oxytocin to squeeze the muscle cells to contract the squeezing the milk into the milk ducts and result in inconsistent milk letdown. Seeing this scientists started to research how oxytocin affects human behavior. It was concluded that low levels of oxytocin could potentially

Get Access