The Morality Of Animal Testing In Today's Society

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.

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

“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.

are not able to give consent for this as would be required of a human. Other

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.

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

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.

Animal testing is a substantial controversy across the nation. According to Rush, Catherine M. et al. “Animal Models to Investigate the Pathogenesis of Rheumatic Heart Disease.” Frontiers in Pediatrics 2 (2014): 116. PMC. Web. 27 Oct. 2016., animal testing has been around for quite some time. Her article states that “Animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, (384 – 322 BC) and Erasistratus, (304 – 258 BC), performed experiments on living animals. Likewise, Galen (129 – 199 / 217 AD), a Greek physician who practiced in Rome and was a giant in the history of medicine, conducted animal experiments to advance the understanding of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), an Arab physician in twelfth century Moorish Spain, introduced animal testing as an experimental method for testing surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.”

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

In 2012, a 24-year-old art student named Jacqueline Traide was subjected to animal testing methods in a Lush store window. Passerby – as well as the rest of the world, after this story was spread – were baffled and sickened by how this young woman was treated, enduring being pulled around by a rope, physical restraint, having cosmetics poured into her eyes, being shaven and more (Harris). She participated in this appalling display to portray the reality of animal testing tortures through our own kind, rather than other species, presenting the question: if this treatment is not acceptable for humans, why is it acceptable for animals?

An estimated 26 millions animals are used every year in the United States for scientific

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

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.

Repeatedly throughout history animals have been used for biomedical research. Animal protection and animal rights groups have severely criticized the practice of using animals for biomedical research in its recent years. To make the practice of animal testing more ‘humane’, laws have been passed in several countries

To obtain the sperm count, the entire epididymis from the rat was minced in PBS media and incubated for 5 min at 37C. The sperm concentration was determined by manual evaluation using a hemocytometer (Neubauer) (13).