Animal Testing: What Is Louis Pasteur�s Animal Research?

What is animal testing? Here is an example, “Animal research makes it possible for new drugs and vaccines to be developed, benefiting both animals and humans. For example, one of the most famous cases of animal experimentation is Louis Pasteur's chicken cholera experiment. Pasteur acquired some of the cholera bacteria and infected some chickens with it. His assistant, Charles Chamberland, was supposed to inject the chickens with the bacteria again while Pasteur was on holiday, but Chamberland did not follow Pasteur's instructions and went on vacation himself. When they came back, the month-old bacteria were injected in the chickens, but instead of making the chickens sicker, the chickens recovered completely from their disease. Pasteur then created a weaker strain of anthrax in 1881 in hopes of recreating the results of the cholera experiment and found that the same method worked, thus finding the vaccine for both cholera and anthrax. Some other medical advancements that have

been discovered through animal testing include penicillin, blood transfusions, insulin (that controls blood sugar levels of diabetics), kidney transplants, and vaccines for polio and meningitis.” (Sun) Today, animal testing has been used as a common way for human’s medical development for hundreds of years because animals and human are alike in so many ways that we could use them as the substitute of ourselves for medical testing.
While some people supports animal testing, more and more people today think we should stop letting an animal suffer. According to Rachel Hajar, who works at Qatar Heart Hospital and Research Center and Hamad Medical corporation, “In recent years, the practice of using animals for biomedical research has come under severe criticism by animal protection and animal rights groups. Laws have been passed in several countries to make the practice more ‘humane’. Debates on the ethics of animal testing have raged since the seventeenth century.” (Hajar) It is obvious that many groups of people and even countries have been having problems with animal testing for medical research development for over years. What makes this such a debatable issue? It is difficult for us to decide what kind of rights animals should have since they cannot speak for themselves. We do not know whether it is worse to stop investigating drugs in the medical field, or to let animals suffer for these experiments. However, there could be some alternative ways for animal testing.
According to Kathy Guillermo, a senior vice president of PETA, “Requiring physicians to learn human medical procedures by cutting apart and killing pigs is like using a map of Asheville to find your way around Raleigh,” (Conti) What she is saying is that animal testing cannot be completely help finishing the medical research since animals and human are only alike but not the same.

That is why when new drugs come out, the developers still practice experiments with a human. In my personal opinion, though medical testing is important for the development of today’s world, animals should not be suffering from human medical development. I am choosing animal testing as my topic for this research project, and I want to focus on people’s opinions on animal testing, and whether there are alternative ways to substitute animal testing in the medical research field. I will be extremely grateful if the PETA would support me while I am doing this research project and help me to stop animal testing. Thank

you!