Imagine a life locked away in a cage with no form of control on your existence. It’s cold, dark, and you are scared. You don’t have a choice of what you eat, where you live, or how you are treated. You are unsure if it is day or night or what will happen to you next. You are locked away in a prison cell and you committed no crime. This is the life of a laboratory animal. Animal testing is the use of animals for scientific research purposes and experiments. It can be used for the findings of cures and medicines to testing new drugs, to understanding the behavioral psychology of the animals themselves. “Around fifty to one hundred million vertebrate animals, ranging from fish to primates, are used in experiments each year” (Lloyd). There are many different terms used to describe the research on animals but two main ideas. In vivo research is where the experiment is conducted on a live organism. In this case the animal is not operated on but rather tested in a natural living state such as exposing the animal to a toxin or chemical and documenting the side effects. The other is vivisection and can be closely related to dissection or surgical experiments on the living. It is an operation on a living animal for testing rather than healing purposes. This word is usually associated with negative perceptions such as torture, pain, suffering and death. Animal testing is performed in a wide arena of areas such as colleges and universities, laboratories, and within pharmaceutical companies. The main uses for the need of animal experimentation are genetic development, biomedical and biochemical research, toxicology, cosmetic testing and more. The use of animals for scientific research has constantly been a topic of ethical debate. Some major ... ... middle of paper ... ...nt/Actions-Israel/UndercoverInvestigation.htm>. www.timetoast.com/timelines/38507 Lloyd, Emma. "Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research." Animal Experimentation (2008): n. pag. Web. 27 Feb 2011. Animal Welfare Information Center. United States. Animal Welfare Act as Amended (7 USC, 2131-2159). , 1966. Web. 1 Mar 2011. . Biever, Celeste. “Can computer models replace animal testing?.” New Scientist 190.2551 (2006): 7. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Mar. 2011. Barnard, Neal D 1997: Animal research is wasteful and misleading. Scientific American 276: 80-85. European Commission. Joint Research Centre. Ispra: ECVAM, 1992. Web. 26 Feb 2011. .
In modern society, animal experimentation has triggered a controversy; consequently, vast amount of protests have been initiated by the animal rights community. Although these organizations have successfully broadcasted their concerns toward animal experimentation, its application continues to survive. Sally Driscoll and Laura Finley inform that there remain fifty million to one-hundred million animals that experience testing or experimentation throughout the world on a yearly basis. But despite opposition, animal experimentation, the use of experiments on animals in order to observe the effects an unknown substance has on living creatures, serves multiple purposes. Those particular purposes are: research of the living body, the testing of
Animal testing is a subject appalled by many people. It is considered to be unethical, inhumane, and downright cruel. One of these reasons for the opposition of animal experimentation is due to the belief shared by many animal activist groups, such as PETA, that animals are kept in appalling living conditions in research facilities. Reasons to believe this are caused by minor instances of laboratories not abiding the law. However, despite these instances the welfare of test animals are preserved by many laws and regulatio...
Testing animals is used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medicinal drugs, check the safety of products intended for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and healthcare roles. The earliest recordings of animal studies date back to Aristotle, who discovered the anatomical differences among animals by analyzing them (Introduction). Advocates of animal testing say that it has enabled the growth of numerous medical advancements, tests to see if new products are save for mankind, acquisition of new scientific knowledge, and because it is accurate (B). Opponents of animal testing say that it is cruel and inhumane to try out on animals, many animals die from the animal testing, it’s unethical, animals don’t have a say in it, the accuracy is in question because they are testing animals and not humans, and the toll of animal testing is high (B). Through the pros and cons of everything, it is bad to test animals because animals are very different from human beings and thus make poor test subjects and are unreliable, the cost and upkeep of it is expensive, and because there are alternatives to animal testi...
Animals are used as a part of experimentations in order to accomplish new openings. A few individuals think that it is satisfactory, while others contend that it is not moral to sacrifice animals for science. Estimated, that fifty to one hundred million of animals are used for tests in the world. Despite the significance of experiments, the quantity of animals and purpose of research are not under any control. Animals testing should be banned under a few circumstances; we can enhance the situation by using alternative ways such as replacement, reduction, and refinement according to International Society for Applied Ethology.
Knight, Andrew. "The Costs and Benefits of Animal Experiments." New Internationalist All Posts RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 March 2014.
...minate the Need for Animal Experimentation." Animal Experimentation. Ed. Susan C. Hunnicutt. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Rpt. from "Avoiding Animal Testing: Advances in Cell-Culture Technologies are Paving the Way to the Complete Elimination of Animals from the Laboratory." The Scientist (Nov.-Dec. 2011). Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
"Animal Experimentation: Debatabase - Debate Topics and Debate Motions." IDEA: International Debate Education Association - Debate Resources & Debate Tools. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. .
Festing, S., & Wilkinson, R. (2007). The ethics of animal research. Talking point on the use of animals in scientific research. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002542/.
Throughout history, animal testing has played an important role in leading to new discoveries and human benefit. However, what many people forget are the great numbers of animals that have suffered serious harm during the process of animal testing. Animal testing is the use of animals in biological, medical, and psychological studies. The development and enhancement of medical research has been based on the testing of animals. There are many questions being asked if animal research is good or not or if the benefit for us is way greater the abuse of animals. Doing tests on animals can help find ways to cure diseases, but testing on them is wrong. Although we want to find cures for diseases to help many people, testing on animals not only brutally hurts them but it also denies the animals the rights they have.
There is a wealth of evidence showing that animal “models” are not accurate and cannot be relied upon for safety testing and disease research. Scientists and doctors recognize that while animals are biologically very similar to human beings, they are not identical.
(Sub-Point # 1) According to The Humane Society International, animal testing is the process of using living animals for research purposes. Much of this research is done for common human use such as medicine, cosmetics, shampoos, cleaning products,pesticides, contact lenses, and diapers. Most of these research facilities will tell you that the pain the animals feel during testing is considered “mild”, but still have the potential to cause pain, suffering, and even death for the animals. Common procedures include forced exposures to chemicals which is done by injections. Animals are also inflicted pain with wounds so that either their healing or stress level can be studied. At the end animals are killed or are used in other experimentations. The number of animals that have been tested on should be reported, but 90% of the animals used in testing here in the United States are not represented on government statistics (Rowan,
It provides information on some of the alternative methods that can be useful, “It is a fact that there are many alternatives to using animals in testing. They include clinical and epidemiological surveys, tissue and cell cultures, organ cultures, bacteria cultures and protozoan studies, quantum pharmacology, mathematical and computer models, genetic engineering, the ames test, the CAM test, audiovisual guides and aids and a lot more.” (Tabak). Human beings argue that animal testing is not necessary. There are other tools that can be used when experimenting. A common one is computer models or even 3D printing. These are some of the tools that just came to light. A couple of more year into the future and animal testing will be off the
Every year, millions of animals experience painful, suffering and death due to results of scientific research as the effects of drugs, medical procedures, food additives, cosmetics and other chemical products. Basically, animal experimentation has played a dominant role in leading with new findings and human advantages. Animal research has had a main function in many scientific and medical advances in the past decade and is helping in the understanding of several diseases. While most people believe than animal testing is necessary, others are worried about the excessive suffering of this innocent’s creatures. The balance between the rights of animals and their use in medical research is a delicate issue with huge societal assumptions. Nowadays people are trying to understand and take in consideration these social implications based in animals rights. Even though, many people tend to disregard animals that have suffered permanent damage during experimentation time. Many people try to misunderstand the nature of life that animals just have, and are unable to consider the actual laboratory procedures and techniques that these creatures tend to be submitted. Animal experimentation must be excluded because it is an inhumane way of treat animals, it is unethical, and exist safer ways to test products without painful test.
Orlans, F Barbara. (1990). Animals, Science, and Ethics--Section V. Policy Issues in the Use of Animals in Research, Testing, and Education. The Hastings Center Report, 20(3), S25-30. Retrieved April 28, 2011, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1658998).
When considering the advantages and disadvantages of animal research, it is important to take into account the successes that have emerged from animal research, like the development of psychotropic medications. The use of animal research has helped some way in the development of everything from the Tuberculosis cure, to the Polio vaccine, to the treatment of AIDS (Gluck, 2003).