The Pros And Cons Of Animal Experimentation

Animal Testing Have you ever wondered how people figured out if medicine works? Animal testing, or animal experimentation, has been going on for a long time. It is the process of using animals with similar DNA, such as chimpanzees, to test new cosmetic and medical products to try and figure out how they will work on humans. It is a very controversial subject . Some people argue animal testing provides valuable information for people and new products; Animal testing needs to be stopped because it is torture to animals and the information gathered is not always accurate. Animal testing can cause PTSD and other lasting problems. Animals used in animal testing are given chemicals that are foreign to their bodies and can cause adverse side effects. They're also often kept in sterile cells isolated from any
kind of social interaction.
This can have a very negative effect. For example a series of case studies of chimpanzees who had been retired from research, published in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation in 2008, found that diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the animals was “consistent with descriptions of trauma-induced symptoms described by the DSM-IV [a publication of the American Psychiatric Association that provides standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders in humans] and human trauma research,”(Animal Experimentation). Some researchers give animals diseases in order to develop new treatments and cures. Most of the time the animals are not given painkillers and are forced to suffer. The only U.S. law that governs the use of animals in laboratories—the Animal Welfare Act—allows animals to be
burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, forcibly restrained, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No experiment, no matter how painful or trivial, is prohibited—and pain-killers are not even required, (Animal Testing is Bad Science). The animals are mistreated in every way possible. Even though they are not human they still are alive, sentient and can feel the pain inflicted upon them. Especially in the case of chimpanzees, they are extremely similar to humans, they suffer greatly from this abuse. Animal testing causes many side effects in animals it is inhumane and wrong. Information gathered from animal testing is not always reliable or accurate. Animals are different from humans, some more than others. Because most drugs have to pass through animal testing before they can be tested on humans, some drugs that work on animals get tested on humans with poor results and vice versa. According to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, "nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies." (Results from Research on Animals Are Not Valid When Applied to Humans) Lipitor, a popular drug for lowering cholesterol, tested very poorly in animals. However, one of the researching crew pushed for human trials and it is now a very successful and helpful drug. Because animals have so many disimiliarities they often do not react the same as humans. For example, Penicillin kills guinea pigs but is inactive in rabbits; aspirin kills cats and causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys; and morphine, a depressant in humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses. (cite)With so many inconsistencies in animal testing, one wonders what people are really accomplishing with it. It costs million of dollars a year. There are more promising and state of the art alternatives that are more successful. Animal testing done today is based more on tradition than success, too many results are inaccurate and unusable. Those who support animal testing claim it provides important information that can’t be gathered in any other way. Those who support the practice feel it is the best way to test new products and medicine without human testing. However at some point, humans will have to begin taking the drugs our using the products. The results on humans will be the same whether or not animals were involved. Today there are many alternatives which are more productive and beneficial, they include simulations, human tissue and cell based research, and computational models. In fact, nearly 95% of U.S. medical schools—including Yale, Harvard and Stanford—do not use any animals to train medical students and experience with animal dissection or experimentation on live animals is not required or expected of those applying to medical school, (Animal Testing is Bad Science). Also when researchers test a drug on an animal, they have to first give the animal the disease, which can take a lot of time and money on it’s own. Then they can begin the process of reversing the disease. Based on the evidence, animal testing does not provide enough important information to validate its use and the money spent. Animal testing is not relevant today. There are less expensive and more productive ways to conduct research and improve science. Conducting research on live animals causes trauma to the subjects and does not provide accurate, relevant information. Based on the evidence, the use of animal testing is more a tradition in science than a sound practice. It’s results are often imprecise and the cost and suffering to animals greatly outweigh the benefits. Due to new developments in research and science, we can find new drugs and products without the use of animal testing it needs to be stopped.