Animal Testing Should Be Banned - Essay Example

Lecturer: Animal testing should be banned Introduction Over one hundred million animals go through suffering and die in cruel chemical, drug, food and cosmetic testing every year. They are also used in teaching biology, training of medical students as well as medical experiments in universities and other learning institutions that are inspired by curiosity (Turner 268). The precise number of animals that go through this torture and cruel treatment is not known as mice, rats and birds along with other cold-blooded animals, that constitute over ninety-five percent of the animals used in experiments, are not under any form of animal protection Acts and thus are not counted (PETA). In the testing of cosmetics, various cleaners and various other consumer products, numerous animals are putrefied, made blind and killed each year by companies. These animals are supposed to breathe in poisonous gases, dogs are required to eat insecticides while rabbits have scarring compounds smeared on their bodies and eyes. Most of the tests that are conducted on animals are not a requirement of the law and in most cases; their outcomes are inexact and misrepresentative. Regardless of whether a product harms an animal or not, it still ends up in the shelves for customers to buy (PETA). The fatal and unpleasant experiments that take place as part of huge supervisory analysis initiatives are in most instances financed by taxpayers’ money. Thesis: Millions of animals experience suffering and are ultimately killed in various kinds of experiments even though modern alternatives have demonstrated that they can produce more accurate results compared to the animal tests Background/context Animals testing, which is also known as in vivo testing involves the use of animals that are not human in testing some where some of the experiments entail the observation of the behavior of the animals. These tests are conducted in universities, medical institutions, drug companies and commercial facilities that provide the services to other industries. Some of the research entails pure research like genetics, developmental biology, testing of drugs as well as cosmetics among other things. The animals may also be used in teaching various disciplines, breeding purposes as well as defense tests, but the activity of using animals in testing has varying degrees of regulation in different nations. Globally, it is approximated that the number of animals ranging from fish to primates used every year may reach tens of millions and sometime more than a hundred million. These numbers do not include the invertebrates like mice and frogs as well as the animals that are not yet weaned, with most of them being killed after the experiments have been completed. Laboratory animals come from different places as some are bred specifically for this purpose while other are hunted and caught in the wild. Advocates of animals testing like the British Royal Society have developed the argument that all the medical achievements in the twentieth century have depended on animals in one way or another. The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research argues that even the most refined computers are not able to develop ideal interactions between molecules and others aspects with the environment, making the research using animals a necessity in numerous areas. Various organizations that deal with animal rights and welfare such as PETA are against the legitimacy of these tests with the argument that they are cruel, inadequately regulated and that progress in the medical field is being delayed by misrepresentative animal testing with some of the tests being outmoded. This means that they cannot be dependable to forecast the impact on human and the costs far outweigh the benefits with the animals having inherent rights not to be harmed and used in cruel testing. Key points For almost one hundred years, safety assessments that involved drugs and chemicals have been reliant on laboratory testing that entails the use of rodents and rabbits and other animals. Apart from the ethical concerns they pose including physical torture and psychological distress, these tests use up a lot of time are resources while remaining restrictive in the number of different substances that can be assessed. These tests also give very little insight of the manner in which chemicals react in the body, and in majority of the instances cannot precisely predict how the human body is likely to respond in a real world scenario. In the same way, health scientists are more and more concerned with the level of appropriateness of research that seeks to model human diseases in the laboratory through artificial creation of symptoms in different animal species. Attempting to simulate human diseases through artificial creation of symptom in mice, dogs and other animals has huge scientific limitations, which have no way of overcoming. In many cases, the symptoms as well as reactions to potential treatments that are observed in different species are not the same as those observed in human patients. According to Mutschler, “One explanation for these differences in observed drug toxicities between animal experiments and human use is the dose of drug usually examined” (76). As a result, ninety percent of the candidate medicines that seem safe and effective during the animal studies fail when administered to humans. These failures of the drugs and their associated research that is as a result of irrelevant animal models delay progress in the medical industry while at the same time wasting resources and risking the health and wellbeing of the people who volunteer for trials. Remedies: Without a doubt, the best test to experiment human reactions to certain medicines and substances should be conducted on humans themselves, as the extrapolation of animal data directly to humans is virtually impossible because of the interspecies variations in their anatomy, physiological structures as well as biochemistry (Leeuwen and Vermeire 239). In predicting toxicology, the amount of corrosiveness as well as other safety variables and the efficiency of new products that are meant for human beings, the traditional tests of the chemicals, products for consumption, medical instruments and new medicine have always involved using various animals. However, currents scientists have been able to create and validate alternative methods that have demonstrated to result in efficient and safer products and medicines for human beings than tests that involve animals. For instance, the any form of corrosiveness and irritation on skin can be tested using EpiDerm and SkinEThic, which are human skin equivalent systems as well as other models of constructed human epitheliums and various sophisticated models (Allen and Waters 232). These models can be computerized to predict the corrosiveness and irritation of the skin through correlating new drugs and chemicals with their likely activities, attributes and effects with categorization accuracies of between ninety and ninety-five percent. In the event that a lack of human applicability is the fatal failing of animal testing, then switching to testing using tools that are relevant to human beings is the most practical solution. The National Research Council in US has demonstrated its vision of ensuring that almost all the routine testing will be conducted on human cells and various scientists all over the globe have supported this vision. Human genome sequencing as well as birth functional genomics, the advanced development of computer capabilities and computational biology, and high-speed machine robotics of screening systems for cells among others, has generated a quiet revolution as far as biology is concerned. Collectively, these innovative ideas, new instruments and principles can assist in uncovering precisely the manner in which chemicals and drugs affect the normal functioning of the human body at different levels. At this point, scientist can be able to use computers in interpreting and integrating this information with data obtained from studies that are conducted at the human and population level. The resultant extrapolations in terms of safety and risks to human beings have a potential of being more relevant to individuals in the real world compared to the animal tests. However, this is merely the beginning; the broader discipline of human health research could gain from an equivalent paradigm shift. Most of the disease areas have recorded minimal progress notwithstanding years of research on animals. More than three hundred million people presently suffer from asthma; however only two forms of treatment have been available for the last half a century. more than one thousand medicines for stroke have been so far been experimented on animals, but out of all this, only one has been seen to be efficient in treating people affected by stroke and this scenario also applies to numerous other human illnesses. An all-inclusive reinvestment in research based on human beings that aims at understanding the manner in which disruptions of the typical human biological gene-level functioning as well as interactions in tissues and cells create illnesses in the human species could result in advanced and efficient treatment along with prevention of numerous problems in the society that result from poor health. Contemporary approaches that do not involve the use of animals in testing have already started decreasing and prevailing over experiments on animals, while in the EU, the principles of “replacement, reduction and refinement” of animal testing has become a legal obligation (Suckow 8). In numerous other parts of the globe, this kind of legal imperatives do not exist and thus the scientists have the freedom to use animals even in the cases where approaches that will not use animals exist. Counter-argument The main argument by the proponents of animal experimentation and testing is their statement that this form of testing has led to the creation of numerous treatments that have been able to save the lives of both human beings and animals (Conn and Parker 147). According to the supporters of this form of testing, there are no alternative approaches to conducting research on a complete living organism and that there are guidelines that do not allow animals to be mistreated in the lab during the experiments. MacNiven argues that, “In fact animal testing is required by law in many countries before drugs and other products can be used on or sold to the public” (191). Conclusion With the continued transformation of science beyond common knowledge in the present world and the advancement in technology in regard to expansion of what humans have been depending on as their rule of the thumb, research and testing should adopt and rely on alternatives instead of using animals. Even though it is difficult for human beings to agree that it is better to experiment with chemicals, that have unknown impacts on people rather than animals, tests that involve animals are seldom carried out with the comfort of these animals being a factor. Most of the smaller animals that are used for various experiments are forced to survive in crammed conditions while the bigger ones are locked in small cages where they cannot stretch or run free. In addition to this, animals are usually tested for intentions that are not linked to the safety of humans such as the experiments concerning biochemistry entailing administering of pain to observe the changes occur in the brain. In essence, these are the reasons why animals testing should be banned, considering alternatives for testing have already been discovered. Works cited Allen, Dave, and Mike D Waters. Reducing, Refining And Replacing The Use Of Animals In Toxicity Testing. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2013. Print. Conn, P. Michael, and James V Parker. The Animal Research War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print. Leeuwen, C. J. van, and T Vermeire. Risk Assessment Of Chemicals. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2007. Print. MacNiven, Don. Creative Morality. London: Routledge, 2002. Print. Mutschler, Ernst. Drug Actions. Stuttgart: Medpharm Scientific Publ, 1995. Print. PETA,. Animal Testing 101. N.p., 2014. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animal-testing-101/ Suckow, Mark A. The Laboratory Rabbit, Guinea Pig, Hamster, And Other Rodents. San Diego: Academic Press, 2012. Print. Turner, Jacky. Animal Breeding, Welfare And Society. London: Earthscan, 2010. Print. Read More