Discuss About Animal Testing

1. Introduction

This report was commissioned by Dr. Karine Chagne, the lecturer in the field of language and culture at IPU in New Zealand. The purpose of this report is to have an overall look at the issue and debate whether animal experience should be banned.

For centuries, animals such as monkey, rabbits and mice had been used in laboratories for medial purpose. As a result, thanks to those experiments, scientists can invent effective medicines which can cure diseases and avoid lethal products from applying on human; thus, millions people’s lives has been saved thank to animal testing. Although the methods of animal experiment has changed in the last few decades, it is still a public concern. There have already been several debates on whether these cruel way of treating animal should be kept. While some people agree to continue animal testing as it is the only way to ensure the safety of the new medicines, many other protests against it.

This report will provide some facts about animal testing, also it will offer persuasive arguments of both good sides and bad sides of this experiments on animals.

1. Discussion

1. Benefits of animal testing to human life

Animal testing help people create different kinds of medicine to cure dangerous diseases. We just cannot deny the role of animal in the development of vaccines, insulin and medicines to cure such high death rates diseases such as cancer and high blood pressure (Murnaghan, Facts About Animal Testing, 2016). Base on the identical body structure of human and animal, scientist can do several researches to create new medicines to improve human’s life without examining directly on human. It is reported that animal’s hormones also works the same way in people. The following animal hormones have all been used successfully in human patients There have been some successful animal hormones that can be used for human patients which are: “insulin from pigs or cows; thyrotropin from cows; calcitonin from salmon; adrenocorticotrophic hormone from farm animals; oxytocin and vasopressin from pigs” (Myth and Facts, 2014). Animals also get illness like human being such as cancer and heart failure, so the treatments for those diseases can be researched on animal to find the best way to cure.

In addition, those experiments first of all help ensure the safety of drugs and medicines before coming into use. Thanks to animal testing, we are able to avoid the failed poisonous drugs which might have killed many people. Also, human harm is reduced and sometimes the successful drugs even help cure the deadly diseases for the tested animals. Moreover, the experiments help develop medical science, as open heart surgery, organ transplants and vaccines for diseases are examples of the “lifesaving medical breakthroughs” which are the results of animal testing. The body structure of some animals, such as monkey and chimpanzee, is almost the same with human, so this is the most accurate way to learn the effects of the new drugs on a living body. The medicines may not always affect human the exact same way it does on animal but is still enough to know whether the drug is safe for human or not. 

In addition, the tested animals are cheap and quickly giving birth, so it does not matter if only some of them accidentally die due to the failed experiments. Every year, about 75,000 animals, in which 87 percent are rodents, are killed because of animal testing by Huntingdon Life Sciences, recognized as one the biggest animal tester of Europe. (Murnaghan, 2016). However, the scientists stated that the amount of those animals also reproduce quickly within a two to three years life cycle, so “several generations of mice can be observed in a relatively short period of time” (Melina, 2010). Also, the experiment animals, such as mice and birds, are cheap can be bought in large quantities for laboratory researches, so if one of them unintentionally die, researchers can get a new one instead to continue the experiments. The animals, especially rodents, are also relatively obedient and easy to handle (Melina, 2010). While some people say that lives of animals may worth some respect, but human life is usually considered much more valuable.

1. Animal experiment should be banned because of its inhumanity and cruelty.

Animal testing is actually a harsh way of mistreating animals, hurting them both physically and mentally. Millions of animals are burnt, crushed, genetically modified, and suffer from fear and pain just to fulfil the curiosity of science. Not stopping at that, scientists even implant electrodes into animals’ brain, specifically primates, forcing them to consume different chemicals and operate repeated surgeries on them. As a result, while a few animals get cured by the successful medicines, many others suffer from diseases that they would never normally have to deal with, which can even lead to death. And after the torture, they are immediately dumped back into a cage like a piece of trash, without being treated any painkiller and their souls are filled with agony and panic. The hidden camera inside laboratories has clearly showed what these animals have gone through, for example, they tremble in fear just when someone walks near them. They also have to suffer from mental damage when having to see their fellow-creature being cruelly tested on or killed. (Peta, 2016).