Animal Testing

Should Animals be used for Research? Should Animals be used for research? This question is very controversial you’re either for it or against it there’s no sitting on the fence with this one. The pros of animal research are that it helps researchers to find what drugs and treatments help the best, improves human health, and helps ensure safety of drugs. Just reading these 3 pros makes animal research seems needed, but with the good there is always the bad. Some cons to animal research which are the main points that animal activist use in their arguments are animals are killed or kept in captivity, Some substances tested may never be used for anything useful, It is very expensive, and Animals and humans are never exactly the same. For me
personally this was a tough question to answer I believe that in some ways it is useful, but on a strictly for it, or against it bases I would have to be again animal research. When I began looking into this topic I found some pretty harsh statistics “Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in U.S.
labs every year.”(Peta). The majority of these animals are used to further the progression of medicine and human life in the world today. The rest of the animals are used as test dummies for other products that may not even be used. “Hundreds of thousands of animals are experimented on each year in order to figure out the results and dangers of products such as cosmetics, other personal care items, and cleaning supplies” (Peta). 92 percent of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work. Human and animal testing agree only 5-25% of the time, according to Huntingdon Life Sciences these stats show that animal testing is definitely not perfect. The animals that are generally used in research are mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, primates, dogs, cats, cows, fish, and birds. They are bred either in the laboratory or in special companies. Others, like the primates, are captured. There is even a market for lab animals licensed dealers sell animals to research companies. “These animals can come from miserable places such as puppy mills. Some dealers will do pound seizures and even go as far to lure animals in with meat and sedatives. Others will pose as animal control officers and get their animals that way.” (Peta). Scientist and researchers use
animal trails for senseless experiments like pesticides trails there are a variety of different ways to test pesticides other the killing animals with them. “According to the Humane Society, registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12, 000 animals.”( dosomething.org) Tests performed on mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs are as follows skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed on shaved skin or dripped into the eyes without any pain relief, so they just suffer, repeated force-feeding studies that last weeks, to search for signs of general illness or any specific health hazards, widely looked down upon in the U.S. are “lethal dose” tests, where animals are forced to swallow large amounts of medicines or test chemical to determine what dose causes death. All in all there is no upside for the animals in animal testing there is just pain and suffering for minimal human gain the other is just to see what might happen which I believe is extremely selfish and sad. Animal testing has been happening for centuries. It even goes back to the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans. Scientist or Physicians would dissect animals with the interest to obtain knowledge. I wonder what they thought gave them the right to just cut a living organism open just to see what’s inside. Yes, animal trails, mainly primate and pig trails, are beneficial to us, but there are also different ways we could text things instead of using animals as our “guinea pigs”. Alternative tests need to achieve one or more of the “three R’s:” Replace, Reduce, and Refine. Replaces a procedure that uses animals with a procedure that doesn’t use animals such as using blood from human volunteers to test for the presence of fever-causing contaminants in intravenous medicines can save hundreds of thousands of rabbits each year from pain and death, there are even brands that specialize in the production of synthetic human skin such as EpiDerm, and SkinEthic this can save thousands of animals each year from painful skin corrosion and irritation tests, “The Neutral Red Uptake Photo toxicity test can substitute the use of mice and other animals in the testing of medicines and other products.” (humanesociety.org)Some methods may not completely take out the use of animals, there are ways to reduce the number of animals used like the “Reduced Local Lymph Node Assay for skin allergy testing which makes it possible to lower animal testing by about 75 percent compared to normal guinea pig and mouse tests”(.humanesociety.org). Researchers use chemical concentrations that are deadly to fish and other sea life, the use of “Fish Threshold Method can reduce the numbers of fish used by at least 70 percent compared with regular test methods.” (dosomething.org).These five alternative methods all work efficiently, but they went through long strenuous processes to be deemed a worthy alterative. For some reason in the U.S. It’s much harder to convince others there are better ways to test our products. “Once an alternative test has been developed by a scientist, it must be scientifically "validated," or evaluated in multiple laboratories to see if its results reliably predict outcomes in people. Validation is sometimes a frustratingly slow process, and the United States has unfortunately proved to be far slower at validating alternatives than the European Union. After an alternative has been scientifically validated, it is then up to government authorities to decide whether—and to what extent—they will accept the use of the alternative to replace, reduce or refine animal use. The opinions of government regulators strongly influence the extent to which private companies use available alternatives instead of traditional animal tests.”(humanesociety.org). I believe the use of chemicals and the harm it does to the animal is the worst part about it .Animals receive chemicals by force-feeding, inhaling or injections.
Blood samples are taken but in the end the animal is killed and the organs are examined in laboratories, research animals also go through mutations. Mutagenicity is when a chemical or physical agent that causes a change in the animal’s actual genetic make-up and leads to sudden mutations. Many of these mutations will cause cancer in the animals. Some scientists purposely administer a carcinogen, a substance that causes cancer, to form in an animal. The animal is usually in the rodent family and afterwards it is killed at the end of the study. Not only will scientists carry out research on animals but they will also force them to reproduce and they will study the reproductive and development aspects or preform test on their newborns. Pregnant animals and their partners, normally rats and mice, will receive a chemical and they will be murdered before birth and the fetuses will be observed for toxicity reports. The nervous system is also studied in neurotoxicity in animals. Hens and mice are usually the subjects and the must endure doses of chemicals or pesticides over a long period of time and are then killed to examine the nervous system and the effects left on it. For example for the test a substance of some sort will be placed in an animal’s eye and it will then be observed in intervals. The animals may suffer,
bleeding, ulcers, and blindness possible for the rest of their lives if they do not die.
“I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn 't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.” Mark Twain. I believe Mark Twain answered the question best should animals be used for research? No I can’t consent to harming any living organism without their consent I believe it falls under cruel and unusual punishment and they done nothing to deserve it we are just too lazy to go the extra mile and discover better methods then harming and murdering innocent animals.

Work Cited
"11 Facts about Animal Testing." Do Something. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013.
"Alternatives to Animal Testing." PETA.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013.
"Alternatives to Animal Tests : The Humane Society of the United States." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013.
"Using Animals for Testing: Pros Versus Cons." Using Animals for Testing: Pros Versus Cons. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013.