The Pros And Cons Of Animal Experiment

It is always said that animals are used for experimentation because genetically they are closest to human beings but if they are this closely related, why are we abusing and torturing them? This is affected ignorance. In her article, “Affected Ignorance and Animal Suffering” Nancy Williams talks about different forms of affected ignorance. One form stood out more than others, “when people refuse to acknowledge the connection between their actions and the consequent suffering of their victims.” The experiments performed on animals are said to be beneficial to those animals, but studies have shown that animal testing could mislead researchers into ignoring cures and treatments. There are chemicals beneficial to human beings but harmful or ineffective to animals, such as aspirin (Akhtar). There are some medicines that have been tested on animals that provide benefits to these animals but when used in human testing, the results were less than great. For example, the drug thalidomide, which was a sleeping pill used in the 1950s, caused severe birth defects in ten thousand newborns. However, when the drug was tested on pregnant animals such as mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats, and hamsters there was no birth defects unless given at an extremely high dosage (Greek). The use of animals in experiments are unreliable when it comes to testing

For years, scientists have experimented with animals to study how diseases and disabilities affect them. Take neurologist Thomas Gennarelli for example. Dr. Thomas Gennarelli used primates as test subjects. For a little bit over 15 years, he bashed primates to imitate head injuries in human beings. He believed the results of his experiments would be beneficial in the future on how we should treat head injuries. The team that worked for him recorded the data via videotapes. Unfortunately, as much as he tried, Thomas Gennarelli flopped and could not create duplicate head injuries. In 1984, participants of the Animal Liberation Front broke into the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical school and swindled the tapes that’s withheld the data from the experiments. They edited the tapes to show the most gruesome abuses of the primates and submitted it to People for Ethical Treatments of Animals. Peta then submitted it to Congress and the media. Participants of these experiments claimed they appease the primates with drugs, so they would feel not pain. The videotapes told a different story. Just before the hammer smashed their heads, the primates tried to escape. The researchers used foul language and performed unsanitary procedures upon the primates. They mocked and chuckled at attentive primates with broken arms. The National Institutes of Health analyzed the videotapes. Thomas Gennarelli was condemned of 9 charges such as unacceptable veterinary care and lack of guidance for the

Everyone has benefited from the use of animal research in one way or another. My sister was diagnosed with asthma when born and without the help of animal research asthma would still be incurable. Experiencing this history with my sister I went into this research with a large bias for animal research. I found that research on animals is not a new discussion, “[h]umans have been using other vertebrate animal species…as models of their anatomy and physiology since the dawn of medicine.” (Franco 239) The ancient Greeks used animals for experiments with no question of morality ever being raised because of their “ranking in the scala naturae (the chain of being).” (Franco) Every major era came with a new dispute over how to handle animal

Animal testing can go from good thing to a terrible thing in a matter of seconds. Animal testing dates to ancient Greece in 300 B.C. Greek philosophers and scientists practiced on animals to find scientific solutions and medical cures. The benefits of animal testing include pacemakers for heart disease, vaccines, and treating conditions such as a brain injury. However, the downside of animal testing is that it is cruel to the animals, can have misleading results, and ninety-five percent of animals are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act. Also, breakthrough results have been made without animals and alternative animal testing is cheaper than using animals for experimentation.

Experimenting on animals need to be regarded as unacceptable by means of many due to the fact that it causes needless suffering to animals, the benefits of these experiments are yet to be proven, and any advantages humans do attain can be produced in different approaches than experimentation. The U.S. law permits animals to be poisoned, burned, shocked, starved, isolated, drowned, intelligence damaged, and addicted to drugs. There is no test that is prohibited and pain killers are not required, whether or not the test is painful or minor. Animal testing and experiments should be banned because of the excessive animal cruelty involved, the

According to Humane Society International, “Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and ‘killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means.’” As you can see theses animals are being treated cruelly and inhumane, just reading that paragraph makes shivers run down my spine. We use animals for testing when according to Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?, “Animal tests are more expensive than alternative methods and are a waste of government research dollars.” Animal tests cost more than alternative methods and as it say in the text a waste of government research dollars. It's crazy to think that this is happening every day since, “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?). Even though we don't think of animals as humans because they are not, does not mean that they can not suffer like a human. Another thing that most of the animals being tested on are mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs, When 11 Facts About Animal Testing wrote about these animals and what happens to them they wrote, "Several

It is unethical to use the cruel methods of animal experimentation for our own benefit alone. The animals used in research range from birds, dogs, cats, and pigs to name a few. So many innocent creatures put up with the immense pain so that science experiments can be made and new products can be put on the shelves. Many of the animals used in the testing and experiments are blind,

These animal experiments are not only preformed in scientific labs but also in hospitals and colleges. Although we may not think of animals as having the same feelings and human, they do indeed share very similar traits. Animals feel a sense of hopelessness, terror, pain, and torture much like humans. This makes it inhumane to even consider using these animals as test subjects for our own benefits. These animals have no say in what we do to them or even how they feel. This to me plays a major role in why we use animals. These animals have no voice to tell that they are hurting from these experiments. To make the condition of this practice worse, these experiments are not only used to find medical solutions that can save human lives but they are widely used in cosmetics testing (Food and Drug Administration 47). After the animals have served their main purpose they are left senselessly to die.

Animal Experimentation leads to death/illnesses/mental illnesses. Animals suffer everyday from undergoing purposeful injuries and deadly surgeries that when happening don’t even get a pain killer or antibiotic to calm or numb the pain. Usually all experiments and surgeries lead to death and suffering,”Animal Ethics that concludes that the practice is “unthinkable” and “in terms of harm, pain, suffering, and death,this constitutes one of the major moral issues of our time””(Goodman Justin ⅓) Animals die and suffer from the pain they have to got through just to see if one little item will help clean a house or help out cosmetologists or even a little pill that they think can cure cancer but really only kills animal.

If they are testing for a really big cure of some sort, animal pain is the least of the problem(“How Much Pain..”). They also have stated that without research on animals, there would not be any progress to end the problems that people encounter. Also, that questions can only be answered by animal testing (“For and Against Animal Testing). Even the comments such as, “ there are so many animals, so why would it matter if some are used for research. It allows them to study the animal for the whole lifespan instead of a short amount of time” (“40 Reasons Why..”). All of these statements are based on opinions and not factual evidence. Just because an animal does not have a voice to speak and say no to animal testing, does mean that we should torture them. The computer testing statistics have proved that progress can be made without testing on animals. It is a much better way to have an animal pass away from natural causes than to have them die from pain caused by a human. There are proven facts that show that animal testing is not needed. If everyone was aware of the pain animals are put through, and the alternative methods, experimenting can be

“Current research provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely feel a full range of emotions, including fear, joy, happiness, shame, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, rage, anger, love, pleasure, compassion, respect, relief, disgust, sadness, despair, and grief.” (http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/10/861.full). By experimenting on animals they are suffering the same way a human would if they were being tortured. However, under those circumstances, humans could try and fight back whereas animals are unable to do so. There are alternative things scientists could do instead of hurting animals. They could do testing in vitro, which is also known as the test tube method. Also as I previously said they could do the experiments on criminals that are in prison for life. There is a method called microdosing. Microdosing is a method “in which humans are given very low quantities of a drug to test the effects on the body on the cellular level, without affecting the whole body system.”

In addition to the fact that animal experimentation is ineffective, unreliable, and costly, testing on animals also violates animal rights. Do we think that just because we are superior to animals that we have the right to subject these innocent creatures to cruel and painful experiments? The superiority humans feel over animals may be the reason why humans feel less troubled by inflicting pain on animals. Or perhaps humans justify this cruel act by saying that animals would not be used in experiments if their use was not absolutely necessary. The pain and misery these animals are put through is absolutely unjustified, especially since the experiments they are subject to are proven to be unnecessary and even pointless. As Ingrid Newkirk states, animals in the laboratories are "under constant stress from fear, the loss of control over their lives, and the denial of all

The scientists make sure the animals are not in very much pain, the scientists make sure they use proper safe tools when doing the tests on the animals. Scientists are very respectful of test animals. They make sure that the animals are treated well and do not suffer at any point in an experiment. The scientists do all they can for the animals when it comes to actually testing on them. If they think it will be uncomfortable for the animals they give them pain killers to relieve the stress and the pain if pain is even involved. The scientists don’t do the tests with intentions on hurting the animals they do it in hope to save lives of many people or make life easier on someone’s life.

“Studies published in prestigious medical journals have shown time and again that animal experimenters are often wasting lives—both animal and human—and precious resources by trying to infect animals with diseases that they would never normally contract (Animal Rights).” This upsetting fact could be prevented if laws were passed to end animal testing. Animal experimentation should be made illegal because innocent animals are being harmed and or killed daily, medicines do not have the same effect on animals as they do people, and animal experimentation is expensive.

Professor Charles R. Magel once said, “Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: 'Because animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”(Animal Experimentation par.1) As far as we know animals have been used for experiment purposes since at least 500 BC and currently at least 26 million animals are being tested on each year.(Should Animals Be Used par.1) Furthermore, “According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies.” (Should Animals Be Used par.1)