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The Use Of Animals And Animal Consumption

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The use of live animals is believed to have begun during ancient times, mostly in order to fulfill the curiosity of the human body. It has been within the last century and a half that more advancements have been made in medical research than in any prior era. Diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, malaria, and smallpox can now be either prevented or treated due to pharmaceutical research that involved the use of animals. The use of animals in scientific research is important because the use of animals has allowed there to be many advancements in the medical field, such as discovering vaccines for deadly diseases, and has allowed for the regulation of chemicals that may be harmful for human and animal consumption. Carl Cohen, a professor …show more content…

It took years before the polio vaccine was deemed safe and reliable. By the late 1950’s, the vaccination of children against polio was routine and by the end of the 1950’s, the number of polio cases that were reported in the United States had gone to just twelve. Cohen reports that animal tissue was vital in finding a vaccine for polio. Extreme caution was necessary for the new vaccine. There had already been several vaccines tried to treat the disease, but they had all failed. Some children actually became ill with polio after they were given the vaccine and that was something that needed to be prevented with the new vaccine. Animal subjects were required for the testing of the new vaccine before it was given to humans. Albert Sabin, one of the researchers, stated that, “‘there could have been no oral polio vaccine without the use of innumerable animals, a very large number of animals’.” In Oslo, Norway, at the University of Christiana, scientist Axel Holst was studying a disease known as scurvy. Holst chose guinea pigs in order to study the disease because they are one of the only species, other than humans, who are unable to produce their own Vitamin C, which means that guinea pigs are capable of having scurvy. Before guinea pigs, Holst had used fowl in order to study scurvy and he found that their diet had an influence on rather or not they developed scurvy. His study with guinea pigs only reinforced this

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