Animals for animal testing are given life for a short time just to have it ripped out by a scientist in a lab coat. If it was a human child that was treated in the same way nobody would stand for it, why? Because animal testing is inhumane, cruel, and morally wrong. Animal testing started with “William Harvey 400 years ago to learn how blood circulated in the body” (FAQ). In a time before medical and technological advancements it was necessary to use animals to develop cures for horrible diseases such as smallpox and polio (Cook). However, in today’s society with a cure or vaccine for over 250 known diseases, Not to mention the 10 infectious diseases that have been 90% eradicated from the Western world (Lloyd). Animal testing is becoming obsolete with the modern advancements in today’s growing world.
Inhumane as defined by dictionary.com is
…show more content…
Nonetheless, that was over 700 years ago, the world has made many advances since then. Scientist are now able to grow cell cultures resulting in the creation of organs and different tissues that can be used in place of the animals for testing (Lloyd). When these horrendous diseases were actively seen in the world scientists did not have the laboratories and donors to enable their research. However, these resources are available today making it so the scientist choose the testing on animals over the other available options.
Today research can be done without the harming or killing of animals through the intense and cruel testing of both medical and cosmetic trails. Cruelty is defined as “willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to others” (Cruel). The painful testing and treatment that the animals undergo daily can vary anywhere from simple eye irritations and burns from the cosmetics to losses of limbs, bleeding out, and eventually
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.
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.
Initially you might believe that animals have moral rights. Animals tested are don’t even have the mental capacity to comprehend different objects, let alone what they’re going through. They just have similar features of a human, which outside of this scenario would be completely useless. Another argument might be how testing doesn’t have guaranteed results, but hurts organisms in the process. While this is true, testing has an 83.7% success rate, while taking in consideration animals that were too weak to live past a few hours. Taking note of how only a few hundred animals are tested on a year, that 16.3% is a minimal amount. This is all for the better of humans, and even animals. After all, animal products are created off of these tests too. The death of a few animals, is better for us, and the rest of
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.
Long term thinking and the invention of new technologies and cures as result of animal testing could possibly be more beneficial for the world as a whole, while short term thinking that views hurting animals for possibly no beneficial outcome would benefit the individual animals that are being tested
Jeremy Bentham once said, “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’” Animal testing is becoming a conflict right now and I believe that Animal testing should be stopped because it is cruel and inhuman, Alternative testing technologies exist, the lack of reliability, and it is expensive. Another quote once said was by Martin Luther King Jr stating “Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake” That quote is saying why do wrong when right can be done, especially when people and animals are involved. Animals have feelings and enjoy life as much as humans do so keeping them in captivity and testing drugs on them is cruel and inhuman.
“Lots of people talk to animals…Not very many listen, though…That’s the problem”(Ben Hoffman). The controversy of animal testing is phenomenal; it always has been. I remember dissecting animals throughout my years of school in the "name of science". It was only until recently that I started questioning the government 's methods to teach us. We dissected a dog shark in my oceanography class last year. There had to been at least 80 dead sharks in about four different buckets; that was when it crossed the line. I understood a lamb eye or something, but breeding sharks in captivity just so they can be killed? Animal testing is wrong in every way to me.
Cohen argues that humans may morally use animals for biomedical research, the study of biological processes and disease, because animals lack rights. He defines rights as moral claims that one human can hold against another, which are bound in both law as well as in comprehension of right and wrong. As animals lack self-conscious placement in a higher ethical order with the ability to weigh needs of self against the needs of others, they therefore lack the ability to have rights. (Cohen 1986: p. 215) To support the morality of animal research, I will show how it has led to many successful treatments of disease in humans, due to the common physiology that we share with other animals. Furthermore, I will argue that the pain caused on research
are not able to give consent for this as would be required of a human. Other
Imagine a life locked away in a cage with no form of control on your existence. It’s cold, dark, and you are scared. You don’t have a choice of what you eat, where you live, or how you are treated. You are unsure if it is day or night or what will happen to you next. You are locked away in a prison cell and you committed no crime. This is the life of a laboratory animal. Animal testing is the use of animals for scientific research purposes and experiments. It can be used for the findings of cures and medicines to testing new drugs, to understanding the behavioral psychology of the animals themselves. “Around fifty to one hundred million vertebrate animals, ranging from fish to primates, are used in experiments each year” (Lloyd). There are
An estimated 26 millions animals are used every year in the United States for scientific
From the early beginnings of civilizations, humans have had a symbiont relationship with animals. Animals have allowed humans to make great progression through history, from early farming methods, to transportation, even scientific research. Recently the ethics of the use of animals in scientific research and clinical testing have been a subject of a controversial debate. Animals have been used in scientific research as early as 500 BC (Miziara et al. 2012). One of the most impactful innovations for quality of life since the end of the middle ages has been medicine, drastically improving life spans and reducing child deaths. One of the key sources of medicinal research during this time and to this day are animal models.
The development of new treatments including medicines are distinguished for being time consuming, costly and complex. However, this timely manner is beneficial for society as it meant to provide an efficient and safe medication. Concerns regarding when animal studies are necessary compared to clinical trials has been a debatable topic among society. For over a decade, animal research has served as a fundamental component in many medical findings. Mousses are commonly used in laboratories, as we as humans share nearly 95% of our genes, making them a useful and efficient model for the assistance of discovering medications used today (Grant, 2017). Bench studies should continue to be practiced by researchers as
The controversy behind animals as research subjects is mainly one of morals and the ethical treatment of said animals. Many people believe we should use them in this way, so we aren 't actually harming people in the pursuit for better things for humans. Though animal testing was a viable resource for many years, it has proven to be extremely controversial and unethical, therefor the use of animals as research subjects should be outlawed.
The issues of ‘cruelty’ to animals and the humane treatment of animals are valid concerns in experimentation is greatly regulated. However, if animal testing is completely eliminated, the development of essential medical devices, medicines, and treatment will significantly be set back.