Why Is Animal Testing Ethical?

Animal testing has been practiced since ancient times. The ancient Greeks killed and dissected animals for scientific and religious purposes, as well as performed experiments on them to discover the functions of living organisms. Through animal testing, human life has been extended and improved. Many great feats have been accomplished using animal based testing. Animal testing has brought us vaccines for polio, TB, and meningitis, as well as, insulin, and asthma inhalers. It also added in the eradication of smallpox, and continues to assist us as cancer survival rates continue to rise. Animal testing has carried us to heights in knowledge we never thought possible. However, animal testing is seen by many to be cruel, wasteful, and inefficient.

In 1966, The Animal Welfare Act (or AWA), was passed to regulate laboratory animal experiments, and prevent unnecessary cruelty; however violations of this act are not uncommon. In March of 2009, the Humane Society of the US (HSUS), found 338 possible violations of the AWA at one research center alone ("Why Animal Testing Is Unethical.") At a University of California an incident occurred at the Davis Center for Neuroscience in 2011, when "three baby mice were found sealed alive in a plastic baggie and left unattended" on a laboratory counter ("Animal Testing Is Bad Sciences.") It could be said that if the law was more forcefully enstricted that cruelty in animal research would greatly decrease. While this is true it must be noted that the law itself is flawed. More than 95 percent of animals used in laboratories are not subject to the minimal protections provided by federal laws ("Should Animals Be Used").The Animal Welfare Act excludes all cold-blooded animals, and farm animals; as well as rats, mice, and birds breed for experimentation. In 2010 AWA covered 1,134,693 animals used for testing; leaving roughly 25 million other animals that are not covered ("Why Animal Testing Is Unethical.") The Animal Welfare act, as it stands now, allows cases of abuse in research animals;

Without the help of data received from animal tests many of our vaccinations would not exist. But despite all of the amazing advances in medicine we have achieved through animal research, animal research is still science, and like all science there are many variables. The Food and Drug Administration has reported that 92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans ("Stop Animal Testing: Replace). The 1950s the sleeping pill thalidomide, which was tested on animals prior to its commercial release, caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities ("Should Animals Be Used"). Not only do drug tests have questionable results, but dermatology tests do as well. Dermatology tests on rabbits have a 40% error rate ("Alternatives in Testing"). There is a very high likelihood that many lifesaving cures have been overlooked due to the fact that they did not work in animals. One report declared that the "source of human suffering may be the dozens of promising drugs that get overlooked when they cause problems in animals that may not be relevant for humans" ("Should Animals Be Used.") Many of the most important advances in health are attributable to human studies, including the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and smoking and cancer, the development of X-rays, and the isolation of the AIDS virus. While many great accomplishments have