Animal Testing

Approximately, more than 115 million animals worldwide are used in laboratory experiments every year (Humane Society International, 2010). Animals, from the fruit fly to the mouse, are widely used in scientific research. Research is critical for the advancement of medicine, leading to increased chances of survival from diseases and improved strategies to prevent them. Without animal experiments, transplants, diseases, cancer, and vaccines would not have been advanced. The use of animals can be inevitable, particularly in conditions that require first-hand understanding of biochemical processes in and outside the body. Therefore, animals should be used for scientific research.
First of all, animal testing is needed for the development of medicine.
They have the ability to respond to the provocations in their environments and to instinctively take actions that are relevant to their survival, but they are not rational (Allen, 2010). Possums, for example, play dead when they sense a predator, and squids spurt ink to make themselves invisible from their enemies. Animals have locomotive skills to live and reproduce, but not the human rationality to think and feel like humans do. So the question is, for scientific experiments that require the use of a living creature, would it be more ethical to sacrifice a person so that the animals would be spared? Or, would the world be a better place to let people and a larger population of animals die in diseases that can otherwise be cured or prevented through animal testing? The welfare of all human beings should be given importance above all, and the animals are a means to make it possible. Then again, people also have the responsibility to replenish and protect these living creatures that provide them their needs. People may use the animals for scientific research, but they should also fulfill their duty to use methods that are least harmful to these creatures. Scientific research is not all about the use of animals. In fact, animals are only used for areas of research where no other techniques can give an answer. The animals used for research are also those that are not in danger of being extinct. For instance, the Hastings Center experiments on a species of monkey that is widespread in Africa to develop new treatments for Parkinson disease (Redmond, 2016). Researchers are also looking for ways to develop better communication channels to prevent the same experiments from being done in multiple facilities. More human techniques are also studied in an attempt to comply with the demands of animal welfare advocacy