Animal Studies Case Study

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Animal studies play a major role in understanding human behaviour as it provides an insight into human behaviour. Although, such studies raise multiple ethical considerations. In any research study conducted, benefits versus risks must be considered and if the benefits are not great then the risk is usually unjustified. The two ethical considerations that will be focused on in this essay are the irreversible damage and invasive procedures used on the animals and the stress induced on them during these studies.

Some studies that are conducted on animals included a change in their natural environment, and this is known to induce stress on them. This has been seen in a lab experiment conducted by Delville in 2002. He wanted to observe the effects …show more content…

They used 39 male mice, 9 of them young and 30 old for this study. They divided these mice into three groups, keeping one group as their control as the rats lived on their normal cycle. The second group was westbound travelling as for them 12 hours of light was delayed for 6 hours once a week and the third group was eastbound travelling as for them 12 hours of light was advanced for 6 hours once a week. This lab experiment lasted for 8 weeks. The researchers found that 17% of the control group had died of natural causes, 32% of westbound mice had died and 53% of eastbound mice had died. Ethics were challenged throughout this experiment as not only was it invasive to completely change the life cycle of an animal but would have also induced stress on said animals. This experiment was repeated again and this times Block and Davidson delayed the light once every four days for the westbound group and advanced the light once every four days for the eastbound, keeping the control as it is. Their findings revealed that the mice of the experimental groups die more easily and it once again showed that most eastbound mice died. They measured the anxiety level of the mice and noticed that they stayed the same throughout the experiment. The two researchers concluded that the rats did not die of stress, but instead, they died because of the constant changes in body rhythm. This experiment is a proof that shows that animal research can provide an insight into human behaviour, but at what cost. Although it was better to conduct this experiment on animals rather than humans as that would be far more ethically

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