Should Animal Testing Be Allowed To Test Drugs
Prompt: Should animal experimentation be allowed to test drugs?
Animal testing is the use of animals for scientific and medical research purposes. Animal experimentation is very prevalent nowadays and it became a common and an accepted means of testing by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Animal testing, however, dates back to many centuries even before Christ. It had started in Greece as indicated by the writings and the records of Greek physicians of the third and fourth centuries BC .Aristotle and Erasistratus were probably the first ones to carry out experiments on animals. Also, the physician, Galen, known as the father of vivisection had dissected goats and pigs and compared his results to the knowledge he had about the human …show more content…
Firstly, the way animals and humans react towards a drug can be drastically different and therefore what applies to an animal might not apply to the human situation. Kara Rogers, in her report, describes the reliability of animal testing results. She says that the chemical properties of a drug are the main factors that determine the effect of a drug in a body. Animal experiments might give an indication whether a drug is likely to be effective but its applicability is determined by the outcomes revealed by clinical trials done on humans. Kara says that sometimes the effect of a drug on animals and humans is different due to the physiological and genetic differences. There are examples of drugs that were proven to be toxic to humans but such toxicity was not evident when it was given to animals. Kara advocates the use of alternative methods such as in vitro tests to test for drugs because not all are applicable to both animals and humans simultaneously. There are many examples of drugs that have completely different effects on humans and animals. For instance, monoclinical antibodies that are used to treat immune system diseases and neurotherapeutics that treat nervous system diseases show completely divergent effects when they are used on animals and humans. (Scientific Alternatives to Animal Testing) .Secondly, one should not forget the physiological differences between the humans and the animals especially rats. According to information stated at the Christian Medical Fellowship about 2.78 million animals are used annually in research in the UK and that most of the animals used in UK are rats. According to the stated statistics only 84% of the animals are rodents, 12% are fish, amphibians or birds, and the rest are small animals, large mammals and primates (CMF Publications). Moreover, people should become conscious of the fact that conditions in which lab animals are kept can influence and alter
Animal testing is the use of animals for scientific and medical research purposes. Animal experimentation is very prevalent nowadays and it became a common and an accepted means of testing by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Animal testing, however, dates back to many centuries even before Christ. It had started in Greece as indicated by the writings and the records of Greek physicians of the third and fourth centuries BC .Aristotle and Erasistratus were probably the first ones to carry out experiments on animals. Also, the physician, Galen, known as the father of vivisection had dissected goats and pigs and compared his results to the knowledge he had about the human …show more content…
Firstly, the way animals and humans react towards a drug can be drastically different and therefore what applies to an animal might not apply to the human situation. Kara Rogers, in her report, describes the reliability of animal testing results. She says that the chemical properties of a drug are the main factors that determine the effect of a drug in a body. Animal experiments might give an indication whether a drug is likely to be effective but its applicability is determined by the outcomes revealed by clinical trials done on humans. Kara says that sometimes the effect of a drug on animals and humans is different due to the physiological and genetic differences. There are examples of drugs that were proven to be toxic to humans but such toxicity was not evident when it was given to animals. Kara advocates the use of alternative methods such as in vitro tests to test for drugs because not all are applicable to both animals and humans simultaneously. There are many examples of drugs that have completely different effects on humans and animals. For instance, monoclinical antibodies that are used to treat immune system diseases and neurotherapeutics that treat nervous system diseases show completely divergent effects when they are used on animals and humans. (Scientific Alternatives to Animal Testing) .Secondly, one should not forget the physiological differences between the humans and the animals especially rats. According to information stated at the Christian Medical Fellowship about 2.78 million animals are used annually in research in the UK and that most of the animals used in UK are rats. According to the stated statistics only 84% of the animals are rodents, 12% are fish, amphibians or birds, and the rest are small animals, large mammals and primates (CMF Publications). Moreover, people should become conscious of the fact that conditions in which lab animals are kept can influence and alter