Deficiencies in Animal Testing and Drug Formulas

Animals are tested on for many cosmetic and medical products, but the treatment of the animals and the quality of the test results are often less satisfactory than the consumer realizes. Every person has most likely purchased either a pharmaceutical or cosmetic product in his or her lives, but the careless techniques for making these products may astound individuals that rely on drugs for everyday use. According to the Food and Drug Administration, “every year about fifteen -hundred” drugs are created, but “twelve-hundred” are deemed unusable for people. Regardless of such a high number or drug rejections, about “one-million Americans are hospitalized from flaws in drugs” (“Animal Experimentation,” 2009). Most of these drugs were tested on animals before being approved for human use, which proves that animal testing is not a successful method of experimentation. Some factors should be considered when deciding what testing method is most helpful to society; whether an animal has similar genetics to humans, if testing animals are treated humanely, and the costs of conducting the tests. Scientists and animal support groups have quarreled for centuries over the morals of using testing animals and human safety when using animals for toxic experimentations. Individuals for animal testing usually claim that there are no alternatives or it is the safest out of all the methods, but he or she may not be aware of modern technologies that are capable of making a new and improved data for certain pharmaceutical products.

Rodents and other small animals are most commonly used as testing subjects, but most animals lack certain humanlike biological and emotional structures that are necessary for making proper medical and co...

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