Animal and Disease Research
During the last few decades, the number of diseases worldwide has increased dramatically.
Unfortunately, these illnesses are also becoming more and more complicated. Understanding how the human body works while it is fighting diseases is a key to finding treatments for them. However, some diseases involve processes which can only be studied inside a living organism. Most people believe that for medical progress that may save millions of lives, limited animal testing is justified, yet some are trying to promote ideas called
“animal rights” and argue that animals should be treated like humans. In fact, animals have been used in laboratory experiments since ancient times. There are several important reasons why people should continue to use animals in disease research projects before human volunteers can take part in a clinical trial.
The main reason why animals should be used is that it is wrong to deliberately expose humans to health risks to observe the course of a disease.
Human life is the most important thing. It is immoral to endanger a person’s health, and it is also illogical to risk a human life when proper substitutes are available. Some animal species are quite similar to humans as most of their body chemistry, cell structure and genes are the same as ours. Therefore, they are susceptible to many of the same health problems as humans and are necessary for medical research when it is impractical to use a human being.
The second reason why experimenting on animals is necessary is that animals are convenient models of a living body that can quickly reproduce itself.
The human body is a complex system, which is why it needs long time to reproduce itself accurately. Despite the fact many animals share a huge amount of similarities with humans, they have shorter life-cycles. This permits scientists to study the effects of drugs throughout an animal's whole life-span. Because very often drugs have influence across several generations,
Unfortunately, these illnesses are also becoming more and more complicated. Understanding how the human body works while it is fighting diseases is a key to finding treatments for them. However, some diseases involve processes which can only be studied inside a living organism. Most people believe that for medical progress that may save millions of lives, limited animal testing is justified, yet some are trying to promote ideas called
“animal rights” and argue that animals should be treated like humans. In fact, animals have been used in laboratory experiments since ancient times. There are several important reasons why people should continue to use animals in disease research projects before human volunteers can take part in a clinical trial.
The main reason why animals should be used is that it is wrong to deliberately expose humans to health risks to observe the course of a disease.
Human life is the most important thing. It is immoral to endanger a person’s health, and it is also illogical to risk a human life when proper substitutes are available. Some animal species are quite similar to humans as most of their body chemistry, cell structure and genes are the same as ours. Therefore, they are susceptible to many of the same health problems as humans and are necessary for medical research when it is impractical to use a human being.
The second reason why experimenting on animals is necessary is that animals are convenient models of a living body that can quickly reproduce itself.
The human body is a complex system, which is why it needs long time to reproduce itself accurately. Despite the fact many animals share a huge amount of similarities with humans, they have shorter life-cycles. This permits scientists to study the effects of drugs throughout an animal's whole life-span. Because very often drugs have influence across several generations,