Animal Testing History
To many people today, see animals as pets that are part of the family, but to others animals are objects that are being used for animal experimentation. Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in medicine testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study. Animal testing has a history that is fraught with controversy and debate, although most of this occurred as a response to increasing awareness around the use of animals for experimental purposes. Animal testing had a rapid increase in the mid nineteenth century that led to the development of numerous agencies aimed at stopping animal testing. Throughout the
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late 1990s the abuses of animals during testing went public and made the society anger towards animal testing. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 24, 1966. It is the only Federal Law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research and exhibition. Animals should not be used for human medical research because it is inhumane, costly, and unpredictable. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane to experiment on animals. For one thing, we are torturing the liv of innocent animals. In the article, “Animal Testing Cruel, Inhumane” the author states that “The experiments include infecting animals with diseases and poison for toxicity testing and even genetic modification” (Animal Testing). Most of the experiments include infecting animals with diseases and using poison for toxicity testing. The worst part is that some animals don’t receive pain relief medication which leads to great amounts pain and suffering for the animals to go through. You never know what can go wrong during the procedures it may cause major physical damage, mental and psychological damage to the animal. There’s different types of animal testing for medical purposes. Each animal is used for different tests. In the article, “What types of animals are needed for medical research” the author states, “Because rates and mice have so many biological similarities to humans, they make up 90-95% of the mammals in biomedical research. Some strains of rats and mice are susceptible to diseases such as cancer or high blood pressure” (What types). The most common animal used for research are mice and rates. Other animals like guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, farm animals, cats, dogs, and more are used for pain and inflammation in the joints or skin problems, heart disease, neurological disorders, and diseases such as HIV and AIDS. Humans only think about themselves and no one else. The do not care that animals have to be put on medicine or even get killed at the end of the procedure. Animal testing effects animals deeply because us humans treat them badly. We eat them and use them for medical research to help find a solution to our health problems. In the book, Animal Experimentation: Cruelty or Science, Nancy Day, a B.A. in Communications from University of Maryland discusses issues surrounding animal experimentation, including animal rights, medical breakthroughs, and alternatives to animal experimentation. In the book, Animal Experimentation: Cruelty or Science, Nancy Day encounters that, “Animals from giraffes to gerbils are used for everything from forced aggression and induced fear experiments to tests on new football helmets and septic tank cleaner” (Day). Other people may argue that animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments. In the article, “Benefits” the author informs us that, “Science has developed a wide range of experimental techniques which are used in preference to animals. Despite this, many key questions in medical science can probably still only be addressed by studies on animals” (Benefits). Even though animal testing has helped cure medical problems such as heart disease and depression; however, it is still wrong to hurt an animal for someone else’s good; even though, they’re not humans does not mean that they don’t have any feelings. Human beings and many animals have similar organ systems and body processes. Experiments on animals help scientists increase knowledge about the way the human body works. In the United States, scientists perform experiments on more than twenty million animals each year. That is way too many. Medical researchers study animals to get a better understanding of body processes in humans and animals. They use many animals to study the causes and effects of illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. Vivisection is the most controversial issue of animal rights. Vivisection actually means “cutting a living thing”. Some popular companies that still test on animals are Band-Aid, Clorox, Febreze, Maybelline, and many more.
Animal testing is costly. We as humans pay for these animal tests because the taxes we pay every year the government uses it to pay for the procedures and the chemicals. In the article, “Feds Spend up to $14.5 Billion Annually on Animal Testing” the author elaborates that “The government spends as much as $14.5 billion per year on animal experimentation, with some projects siphoning off taxpayer dollars for decades and resulting in the cruel treatment of an unknown number of animals” (Bastasch). The government is supporting the animal testing even though the animal welfare act of 1966 regulates the treatment of animals in research and exhibition. Using $14.5 billion per year is a lot of money to be spent on killing innocent animals. That money can be used for other useful things such as education, transportation, and construction. This money goes for the different chemicals that are needed to be used for the experiment and different doses. Costs of the research include investment in the procurement, handling, and upkeep of animals for labs is a highly lucrative enterprise for animal importers, breeders, dealers, cage and equipment manufacturers, feed producers, and drug companies. Instead of wasting the government money on killing animals and harming them we can spend the money on education or build more shelters for animals to give them a safe home. Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animal’s sake and to ensure reliable test results. In the article, “How research institutions ensure about lab animals are treated humanely” the author explains that “As a behavioral ecologist, I want the fish that I study to be as healthy and comfortable in a lab setting as possible because I can’t possibly claim to be observing trends in natural behaviors if my animals are sick or stressed out. This means that you’ll find researchers going to great pains to ensure that their study organisms are housed in the best conditions possible” (Fuschmu). Myer is saying that animals get taken care of like humans do because in order for scientist to get good results they need to keep an eye on their animal to make sure that they’re health and happy.
Animal testing is wasteful and predictable.
Sometimes the tests don’t go as planned and the animal dies either the medicine is too much or the dose is. In the article, “The World’s Largest Animal Testing Programme – Even Worse Than You Thought” the author encounters that “the world’s largest animal testing programme – which has already killed an estimated 200,000 animals – is killing tens of thousands more animals than the law says it should” (Peta). Thousands of animals are being killed every day to get find health cures for humans. Since technology has improved over the years, maybe there will be less animal testing. There are endangered species like Chimpanzees that are facing high risk of extinction. In the article, “Endangered species used in medical experiment” the author clarifies that “Chimps were used because we have the same DNA make up. They are used in various experiments as animal models for human diseases because like humans, they can contract nearly all diseases like HIV, Hepatitis A, B, and C. They are also used in research like heartless transplant, alcoholism, aging, social and maternal deprivation, and oral contraceptives, as well as skull impact research” (Ortigas). Many chimps are privately owned as pets, and then bought for research programs. Using the chimps as laboratory subjects are just one of the factors why these animals are critically endangered. If it works on an animal, it might not work on humans. The reaction of some drugs in an animal’s body is quite different from the reaction of humans. In the book Animal Welfare, by Sylvia Engdahl, an American writer, known best for science fiction states that “Due to the fact that animals are in an unnatural environment, they won’t react to the drug in the same way compared to their potential reaction in a natural experiment” (Engdahl). Scientist fail most of the times with their studies because they do not know how it will react to a human’s body. It’s highly likely that one test will work on
an animal then a human because humans and animals aren’t alike. It’s better to do the research on humans because you know that it cures human’s health. Others may argue that animals are appropriate research subject because they are similar to human beings in many ways. In the article, “Advocacy for animal’s scientific alternatives to animal testing” the author elaborates that “Animals and humans are similar in many ways. Animal behavior can be as complex as human behavior, and the cellular structures, proteins, and genes of humans and animals are so similar that the prospect of using animal tissues to replace diseased human tissues is under intense investigation for patients who would otherwise never receive a potentially life-saving transplant” (The Editors). However, the way in which animals and humans react to their environments, both physiologically and behaviorally, can be drastically different, and the conditions under which laboratory animals are kept can influence and alter experimental results. Conversely the use of animals is seen by many in the medical field as necessary. While it is not ideal to cause harm to animals it is a safer way to test new products compared to testing them on humans. Typical research and development will begin trials on rats. If those tests prove successful, then another set of tests are conducted on monkeys. Once the tests are successful with monkeys then human testing begins. These tiered rounds of testing are used to reduce the number of mistakes and negative side effects in all breakthroughs. It is argued that animal testing saves many lives and there is no alternative to testing on a living organism. In addition, there are strict regulations for animal testing which prevent any mistreatment of the animals in question. Overall the use of animals for research testing is an old concept and one that has historically been debated. Proponents claim that with regulations in place the animals are not intentionally harmed and that they are taken care of and treated as well as possible. They claim that there is no alternative and that the use of animal testing has saved many lives. And yet there are animal friendly organizations who claim that it is an unnecessary step to use animals for testing and it should be stopped due to its inhumane and cruel nature.
Animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals’ rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available. Humans cannot justify making life better for themselves by randomly torturing and executing thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or test products. Animals should be treated with respect and dignity, and this right to decent treatment is not upheld when animals are exploited for selfish human gain. Animal experiment will not come to an end with such a cruel society we live in. Everyday more than a thousand animals suffer due to the torture and experiments that scientists use on animals. With the government being a supporter to such acts for animal cruelty, the numbers will keep increasing higher and higher. Still other people think that animal testing is acceptable because animals are lower species than humans and therefore have no rights. These individuals feel that animals have no rights because they lack the capacity to understand or to knowingly exercise these rights. However, animal experimentation in medical research cannot be justified on the basis that animals are lower on the evolutionary chart than humans since animals resemble humans in so many ways. Many animals, especially the higher mammalian species, possess internal systems and organs that are identical to the structures and functions of human internal organs. Also, animals have feelings, thought, goals, needs, and desires that are similar to human functions and capacities, and these similarities should be respected, not exploited, because of the selfishness of humans. Animal’s lives should be respected because they have an inherent right to be treated with dignity. The harm that is committed against animals should not be minimized because they are not considered to be human. After all, humans are animals too.
late 1990s the abuses of animals during testing went public and made the society anger towards animal testing. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 24, 1966. It is the only Federal Law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research and exhibition. Animals should not be used for human medical research because it is inhumane, costly, and unpredictable. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane to experiment on animals. For one thing, we are torturing the liv of innocent animals. In the article, “Animal Testing Cruel, Inhumane” the author states that “The experiments include infecting animals with diseases and poison for toxicity testing and even genetic modification” (Animal Testing). Most of the experiments include infecting animals with diseases and using poison for toxicity testing. The worst part is that some animals don’t receive pain relief medication which leads to great amounts pain and suffering for the animals to go through. You never know what can go wrong during the procedures it may cause major physical damage, mental and psychological damage to the animal. There’s different types of animal testing for medical purposes. Each animal is used for different tests. In the article, “What types of animals are needed for medical research” the author states, “Because rates and mice have so many biological similarities to humans, they make up 90-95% of the mammals in biomedical research. Some strains of rats and mice are susceptible to diseases such as cancer or high blood pressure” (What types). The most common animal used for research are mice and rates. Other animals like guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, farm animals, cats, dogs, and more are used for pain and inflammation in the joints or skin problems, heart disease, neurological disorders, and diseases such as HIV and AIDS. Humans only think about themselves and no one else. The do not care that animals have to be put on medicine or even get killed at the end of the procedure. Animal testing effects animals deeply because us humans treat them badly. We eat them and use them for medical research to help find a solution to our health problems. In the book, Animal Experimentation: Cruelty or Science, Nancy Day, a B.A. in Communications from University of Maryland discusses issues surrounding animal experimentation, including animal rights, medical breakthroughs, and alternatives to animal experimentation. In the book, Animal Experimentation: Cruelty or Science, Nancy Day encounters that, “Animals from giraffes to gerbils are used for everything from forced aggression and induced fear experiments to tests on new football helmets and septic tank cleaner” (Day). Other people may argue that animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments. In the article, “Benefits” the author informs us that, “Science has developed a wide range of experimental techniques which are used in preference to animals. Despite this, many key questions in medical science can probably still only be addressed by studies on animals” (Benefits). Even though animal testing has helped cure medical problems such as heart disease and depression; however, it is still wrong to hurt an animal for someone else’s good; even though, they’re not humans does not mean that they don’t have any feelings. Human beings and many animals have similar organ systems and body processes. Experiments on animals help scientists increase knowledge about the way the human body works. In the United States, scientists perform experiments on more than twenty million animals each year. That is way too many. Medical researchers study animals to get a better understanding of body processes in humans and animals. They use many animals to study the causes and effects of illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. Vivisection is the most controversial issue of animal rights. Vivisection actually means “cutting a living thing”. Some popular companies that still test on animals are Band-Aid, Clorox, Febreze, Maybelline, and many more.
Animal testing is costly. We as humans pay for these animal tests because the taxes we pay every year the government uses it to pay for the procedures and the chemicals. In the article, “Feds Spend up to $14.5 Billion Annually on Animal Testing” the author elaborates that “The government spends as much as $14.5 billion per year on animal experimentation, with some projects siphoning off taxpayer dollars for decades and resulting in the cruel treatment of an unknown number of animals” (Bastasch). The government is supporting the animal testing even though the animal welfare act of 1966 regulates the treatment of animals in research and exhibition. Using $14.5 billion per year is a lot of money to be spent on killing innocent animals. That money can be used for other useful things such as education, transportation, and construction. This money goes for the different chemicals that are needed to be used for the experiment and different doses. Costs of the research include investment in the procurement, handling, and upkeep of animals for labs is a highly lucrative enterprise for animal importers, breeders, dealers, cage and equipment manufacturers, feed producers, and drug companies. Instead of wasting the government money on killing animals and harming them we can spend the money on education or build more shelters for animals to give them a safe home. Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animal’s sake and to ensure reliable test results. In the article, “How research institutions ensure about lab animals are treated humanely” the author explains that “As a behavioral ecologist, I want the fish that I study to be as healthy and comfortable in a lab setting as possible because I can’t possibly claim to be observing trends in natural behaviors if my animals are sick or stressed out. This means that you’ll find researchers going to great pains to ensure that their study organisms are housed in the best conditions possible” (Fuschmu). Myer is saying that animals get taken care of like humans do because in order for scientist to get good results they need to keep an eye on their animal to make sure that they’re health and happy.
Animal testing is wasteful and predictable.
Sometimes the tests don’t go as planned and the animal dies either the medicine is too much or the dose is. In the article, “The World’s Largest Animal Testing Programme – Even Worse Than You Thought” the author encounters that “the world’s largest animal testing programme – which has already killed an estimated 200,000 animals – is killing tens of thousands more animals than the law says it should” (Peta). Thousands of animals are being killed every day to get find health cures for humans. Since technology has improved over the years, maybe there will be less animal testing. There are endangered species like Chimpanzees that are facing high risk of extinction. In the article, “Endangered species used in medical experiment” the author clarifies that “Chimps were used because we have the same DNA make up. They are used in various experiments as animal models for human diseases because like humans, they can contract nearly all diseases like HIV, Hepatitis A, B, and C. They are also used in research like heartless transplant, alcoholism, aging, social and maternal deprivation, and oral contraceptives, as well as skull impact research” (Ortigas). Many chimps are privately owned as pets, and then bought for research programs. Using the chimps as laboratory subjects are just one of the factors why these animals are critically endangered. If it works on an animal, it might not work on humans. The reaction of some drugs in an animal’s body is quite different from the reaction of humans. In the book Animal Welfare, by Sylvia Engdahl, an American writer, known best for science fiction states that “Due to the fact that animals are in an unnatural environment, they won’t react to the drug in the same way compared to their potential reaction in a natural experiment” (Engdahl). Scientist fail most of the times with their studies because they do not know how it will react to a human’s body. It’s highly likely that one test will work on
an animal then a human because humans and animals aren’t alike. It’s better to do the research on humans because you know that it cures human’s health. Others may argue that animals are appropriate research subject because they are similar to human beings in many ways. In the article, “Advocacy for animal’s scientific alternatives to animal testing” the author elaborates that “Animals and humans are similar in many ways. Animal behavior can be as complex as human behavior, and the cellular structures, proteins, and genes of humans and animals are so similar that the prospect of using animal tissues to replace diseased human tissues is under intense investigation for patients who would otherwise never receive a potentially life-saving transplant” (The Editors). However, the way in which animals and humans react to their environments, both physiologically and behaviorally, can be drastically different, and the conditions under which laboratory animals are kept can influence and alter experimental results. Conversely the use of animals is seen by many in the medical field as necessary. While it is not ideal to cause harm to animals it is a safer way to test new products compared to testing them on humans. Typical research and development will begin trials on rats. If those tests prove successful, then another set of tests are conducted on monkeys. Once the tests are successful with monkeys then human testing begins. These tiered rounds of testing are used to reduce the number of mistakes and negative side effects in all breakthroughs. It is argued that animal testing saves many lives and there is no alternative to testing on a living organism. In addition, there are strict regulations for animal testing which prevent any mistreatment of the animals in question. Overall the use of animals for research testing is an old concept and one that has historically been debated. Proponents claim that with regulations in place the animals are not intentionally harmed and that they are taken care of and treated as well as possible. They claim that there is no alternative and that the use of animal testing has saved many lives. And yet there are animal friendly organizations who claim that it is an unnecessary step to use animals for testing and it should be stopped due to its inhumane and cruel nature.
Animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals’ rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available. Humans cannot justify making life better for themselves by randomly torturing and executing thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or test products. Animals should be treated with respect and dignity, and this right to decent treatment is not upheld when animals are exploited for selfish human gain. Animal experiment will not come to an end with such a cruel society we live in. Everyday more than a thousand animals suffer due to the torture and experiments that scientists use on animals. With the government being a supporter to such acts for animal cruelty, the numbers will keep increasing higher and higher. Still other people think that animal testing is acceptable because animals are lower species than humans and therefore have no rights. These individuals feel that animals have no rights because they lack the capacity to understand or to knowingly exercise these rights. However, animal experimentation in medical research cannot be justified on the basis that animals are lower on the evolutionary chart than humans since animals resemble humans in so many ways. Many animals, especially the higher mammalian species, possess internal systems and organs that are identical to the structures and functions of human internal organs. Also, animals have feelings, thought, goals, needs, and desires that are similar to human functions and capacities, and these similarities should be respected, not exploited, because of the selfishness of humans. Animal’s lives should be respected because they have an inherent right to be treated with dignity. The harm that is committed against animals should not be minimized because they are not considered to be human. After all, humans are animals too.