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Should animals be used in research
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Animal research has been around for several years. It is what helped discover so many cures for illnesses and saved over thousands of human lives. But is animal research ever justifiable? Several people believe that animal testing is cruel and shameful, but then there are those who believe it is necessary to humans well being. Animal testing is when procedures are performed on living animals for research purposes on biology and diseases that affect human beings. The point of animal testing is to see how the animals react to the procedure or medicine and if it is safe for human beings to have access to. Animals are tested with cosmetic products, household cleaning products, food chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Should animal testing be stopped or is it justified? There are different views on this topic and each group believes strongly in their opinion.
Animal testing has been around for centuries. It has been found in ancient Greek writings in 500 BC. Physicians and scientists like Aristotle performed these experiments to find the functions of living organisms. Dissection and other experiments were first practiced on human beings that were criminals but then laws prohibited the mutilation of a human body. Scientists then switched to animals and they argued that animals had no intelligence so there was no injustice being performed. One of Aristotle’s successors’ felt otherwise. His name was Theophrastus and he believed that animals, just like human beings, could feel pain and in causing pain to them it was an insult to the Gods.
Public objection on Animal testing didn’t begin until the 19th century. In 1875 the Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection was formed and several other similar groups began to be form...
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...till could have been discovered with ought the use of animals. There is no evidence at all that shows that animal testing was an essential for medical and scientific advances.
If animals do share a close amount of DNA with human beings then they should have rights. They are innocent creatures and do feel pain just like any living creature. Using animals just because they don’t have the cognitive ability, speech or moral judgment is not justifiable at all. Animal testing is not justifiable anymore because it isn’t very reliable. Some drugs that pass animal tests affected human beings in a very different and harmful way that they had to be pulled back. It isn’t always accurate and is a waste of time now. Animals were used for testing long ago and we learned sever new things but since we’ve already learned from them it is time to move on to better forms of research.
The roots of animal experimentation began in the early 1600s when the world expressed in interests on the functions of animals and their uses in human life. However, it wasn’t until the incident regarding the drug thalidomide in 1960 did the government make it a requirement for drugs be tested on animals. During the incident, millions of women took the medication believing that it would be a source of relieve from morning sickness, not knowing however that it would cause irrevocable effects on their unborn children (Watson 4). Although the ruling seemed to provide a sigh of relief to some, the very idea of placing animals in strange uncomfortable environments and experiencing pain and euthanasia angered many. According to the American Anti-Vivisection Society, commonly known as AAVS, It is wrong to treat animals as objects for the purpose of scientific research, and to cause them pain and suffering (“Animal Research Is Unethical and Scientifically Unnecessary”). Although the arguments against animal experimentation seem credible, animal testing on medicines and products are necessary in order to insure the safety of human beings.
There is a moral blind spot in the treatment of animals that enable us to justify the cruelties for the perceived benefits of humans. Animals are living things. They have lungs which breathe, hearts which beat, and blood that flows. In fact, animals sense of smell, sight, and sound is much more acute than our own. Therefore, we can assume that their sensitivity to pain is at least equal to ours. According to Hippocrates, “The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.” This can go with the Duty Theory that states that every individual gets treated the same. The intentions of animal testing is not to harm the animals, but that is exactly what it does.
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...
Animal testing began when William Harvey used animals 400 years ago to find out how blood circulated through the body. The "modern" era of animal research however started about 150 years ago with the rise of physiology as a science. It was very different back then. There were no anesthetics or effective painkillers, so the animals suffered a great deal, as did patients. Scientists learned that putting animals, or humans through that type of torture was inhumane. Consider having to have a leg amputated, which was not uncommon in those days due to the fact that infections got very severe without the use of antibiotics, without even so much as an anesthetic to control the pain. Now the treatment is there to help the pain, so neither human nor animal has to go through the excess undue strain. Through all the new medical technology still there will be people who disagree with animal testing. Animal testing provides many benefits that looked over most of the time. One of the most common questions is, “why are animals used in research?” The answer to that question can be broken down into three separate categories.
It should be noted that, animals are metabolically, physiologically, and anatomically unlike from human beings, hence, the tests working on animals can surely prove to be unsuccessful in human beings (Animal Experimentation). Animals react very differently compared to human beings, and therefore, tests done on animals can be hazardous when done on human beings. In addition, even though humans and animals share a number of biological traits, they have biological differences and this is enough reason to question the data obtained from animal experiments and is to be used on humans. It is very wrong to subject animals to cruel procedures in the name of promoting the future human health and this denies them a normal life, yet they are at liberty to yet there is no prove that these tests can work well on human beings. For example, guinea pigs are used in animal experimentation, yet a guinea pig and a human being react very differently to some drugs, for instance penicillin is toxic to a guinea pig, and a cure to human beings. This proves that, any test done on a guinea pig will automatically be unsafe for human beings. Another example is that, drugs that are effective on dogs, or other animals can fail to be effective on human beings. Therefore, it is important to note that, animal testing has its
It is estimated that each year, over 100 million animals-including mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians-are killed in U.S. laboratories for various testings, according to PETA.org. Americans should reconsider their usage of animal testing due to the fact that humans have an improper advantage to animals. Organizations such as PETA, do whatever possible to protect the rights animals have. Due to such organizations, there have been more reasons to find ways to no longer find the need to test on animals. Animal testing is unfair to animals due to the subjection of unconsenting pain to when used for medical experimentation.
Every year approximately 100 million animals are killed as a part of scientific research in the United States alone. Animal testing is a highly controversial practice in the modern world. There are records of animals being used in biological and medicinal research as far back as 384 BCE with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Many people believe animal testing is unethical as it is bringing harm to animals in order to benefit humans. Ever since the beginning of this practice, animal testing has been used for a variety of purposes, all of which are inhumane and unethical.
Animal testing has gone back as far as three hundred B.C.E with the Greek physician and philosopher, Aristotle (*). Then there was Galen, a Greek physician, who studied animals in Rome and learned more about medicine, made advancements in understanding anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. To modern society, Galen is referred to as being the father of vivisection. In the twelfth century in Spain, Ibn Zuhr, an Arab physician who made use of animal experimentation that led to testing the effectiveness of surgical procedures, first on animals, and then applying the information to human patients. Though most of his testings were on goats, much of his research went into postmortem autopsies and dissections. (Hajar) (Naik)
Is the use of animals in research justified? Should animal experimentation be permitted? Should these animals be liberated? A logical person would say the benefits justify the research. Without animal testing, products would be based on theory. No one would want to use something, which may damage eyes, be poisonous, cancerous, and cause birth defects. Animals used in testing are not from the endangered species list; also many of the types of animals used are killed each year by rat or mouse traps, animal control, exterminators, and animal shelters. Animal testing reaps great benefits such as finding effective drugs to combat disease, improve surgical procedures, and make products safe.
The argument surrounding animal testing is older than the United States of America, dating back to the 1650’s when Edmund O’Meara stated that vivisection, the dissection of live animals, is an unnatural act. Although this is one of the first major oppositions to animal testing, animal testing was being practiced for millennia beforehand. There are two sides opposing each other in the argument of animal testing, and the argument is one of the oldest arguments still being debated today. The history of animal experimentation and testing, and the arguments surrounding it, has an expansive and somewhat extensive history. Some of the first medical research that was conducted on living animals was done by Aelius Galenus, better known as Galen, in the second century C.E. There have been examples of animal testing in earlier dates, but Galen devoted his life to understanding science and medicine, so he is attributed to being the father of vivisection.
Picture yourself in a testing laboratory; needles, drugs, and knives pointed in your direction with you having no idea what’s going on around you, this is how animals everyday are treated, we have to stop this now! Millions of animals are killed in laboratories everyday with no chance to object to what the testers are about to do to them. Animals feel as much pain as humans do so why does it make it okay to test on them when they are so alike to humans? Every day people test makeup, shampoos, and medicines on animals, the strange thing is that animals have different skin, hair, and internal organs than humans have. Since the animals have different internal organs than humans only 5-25% of the testing results are agreeable between animals and humans.
According to the article” Save the Animals: Stop Animal Testing,” animals’ rights are violated when the sciences are doing the research and there are many similar ways between humans and animals, such as how they feel and behave. Even though animals cannot express their opinions, they still feel, think, and experience pain. When the sciences use animals to do the research, humans still need to respect them because of animals’ rights. Animals have their opinions they cannot explain and humans have a duty to protect animals’ rights. Animal testing should be banned because humans need to respect their minds.
Animals should not be victims of vivisection when they have just as much of a right to be here as we do. The money used for animal testing could be used for a project with better potential. Animal testing should not be acceptable considering all the alternatives that technology has the power to do. The abuse of animals in medical experiments is a flaw on humanity, the sooner we end it, the better.
The people claim that, animal testing infringes animal’s rights, make animal suffering in the experiments, and some of animal experiments may never useful to human beings. This is true, but we cannot stop animal testing. According to the article “Facts about Animal Research” by Cook (2006), the smallpox have been disappear from the earth because scientists get vaccines from cows. Also, the scientists get insulin, which is the only drug, which can control diabetes, from dogs and fishes. Many medicines are related to medical animal experiments, we cannot give up medical animal experiments. In addition, people consider that animal are suffering in the experiments. But according to the author Harish (2011), there are 44% of animals were used in experiments, which involve pain. What’s more, most of animals are get pain relief drugs in the experiments. That can make animals do not feel pain. So, the medical animal testing should be
For years animal testing has been a very controversial issue around the globe. Animal testing has been very beneficial to people, but has cause an up stir to animal rights activists and organizations like PETA. “The earliest references to animal ex...