Download Animal Testing

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Kennedy Winnie
Mr. Gross
English 12 B (3)
9 May 2014
Animal Testing
Languishing in pain, aching with loneliness, longing to roam free and use their minds,
this is how millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs and other various animals go
through every day. Living in fear of the next terrifying procedure they will encounter. After the
life they did not chose to endure, full of pain, helplessness and fear, most end up being killed, if
the test do not kill them first (“Animal Testing 101” 1). Animal testing is inhumane and must be
illegal in all fifty states. Animal testing is defined as the use of non-human animals in research
and development projects for purposes of determining the safety of substances such as food or
drugs (“animal testing” 1). It is unethical to put millions of animals in pain. Animal test results
mislead researchers’ decisions regarding cures. Also animal testing is not relevant to human
health. Some people may say that animals and humans share many of the same diseases. What
they do not know about are the new techniques used to test different products and/or find cures
for diseases. Testing of animals is not the best choice for new drugs and other projects.
Animal testing is unethical to put millions of animals in pain. Animal testing “inflicts
both physical pain as well as psychological distress and suffering on large numbers of sentient
creatures.” (“About Animal Testing: Humane Society International” 1). Animals do not deserve
to be put through pain to help humans find cures. Society is being harmed because animal test
are time consuming and resource intensive. After all the time and resources are spent the test
results do not provide understanding of how the chemicals act in the body. Animals that are in
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testing labs are not encountering real life conditions similar to humans. Many of the results do
not portray real world human reactions (“About Animal Testing: Humane Society International”
1). Lawrence A. Hansen explains what happens to a rhesus
monkey in a study of eye movements at the University of
California San Francisco. Hansen says “for the last 20 years
have undergone coil implantations in both eyes, multiple
craniotomies for in-depth electrode placement, head
immobilization surgeries where screws, bolts and plates are
directly attached to the skull and water deprivation so that
they will visually track moving objects.”(Hansen 1). The
Figure A
conditions rhesus monkeys have to endure just to track moving objects are ridiculous. Above in
figure A from Enza, a doctor is performing a test on a rhesus monkey in the form of a shot. The
monkey’s face is showing an immense amount of pain. Most citizens of the United States would
not be able to watch or even glance at a picture or video of the test rhesus monkeys suffer
through, a study that is not relevant to humans and does not need to be performed. Putting
animals through horrifying pain, starvation and surgeries for no benefit to humans is unethical.
Animal test results mislead researchers’ decisions regarding cures. Experiments on
animals can contribute to illnesses or deaths in humans because the results fail to show certain
effects (Barnard, Neal D., Kaufman, Stephen R 1). When researchers approve or disapprove a
drug based on the results of an animal experiment, the drug could actually cause a different
effect in humans than it did on the animal. The drug might have been a cure, or might have been
the cause of a disease getting worse. Gina Kolata says it best when she stated, “The paper helps
explain why every one of nearly 150 drugs tested at a huge expense in patients with sepsis has
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failed. The drug tests all were based on studies in mice. And mice, it turns out, can have
something that looks like sepsis in humans, but is very different from the condition in humans.”
Almost one hundred and fifty different drugs were tested on patients with a certain disease and
every single drug failed to cure or even help that disease. Because such drugs were only tested on
mice when regarding the disease in humans and the drug passed in mice but failed to do anything
in humans, this shows that animal testing misleads researchers’ decisions to approve or
disapprove a certain drug for human beings.
Animal testing is not relevant to human health. When running test on animals in hope to
imitate what would occur to humans there are major “scientific limitations”, as said by Humane
Society International, that cannot be overcome. More often than not symptoms seen in other
species do not resemble such symptoms of humans. Humane Society also states “9 out of 10
candidate medicines that appear safe and effective in animal studies fail when given to humans.”
When drugs approved from animal tests fail on humans because of irrelevant models, the process
to find a cure in delayed and resources, including money and an innocent animal, are wasted
(“About Animal Testing: Humane Society International” 1). Wasting money, time and animal
lives harms society substantially. Dan Karney explains that animal testing is outdated when he
says “It seems clear pharmaceutical companies and the FDA are reluctant to drop animal testing
for one important reason: liability. They want to be able to say “look, we tried it on animals” if
something goes wrong in the human testing phase. However, even after all that testing on
animal, and then on humans, the FDA still has to recall from market hundreds and sometimes
thousands of drugs per year (Kavilanz 1). Stop experimenting on animals now, it only causes
suffering for them and humans do not see much benefit – if any at all.” Karney does not see the
reason to cause animals pain when it does not help humans with disease cures. According to
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Karney, animal testing is an expired method to curing human diseases. Animal testing results are
irrelevant to cures for human diseases.
Supporters of animal testing are convinced share many diseases with humans. According
to Wright, Kazdin and Effron some of the diseases found in both animals and humans are heart
disease, breast cancer, skin cancer, bone cancer, obesity and diabetes, sexually transmitted
infections and erectile dysfunction. Wright, Kazdin and Effron state “For the past six years, the
UCLA cardiologist has been consulting with the Los Angeles Zoo to help treat diseases found in
animals. Natterson-Horowitz said she was surprised to learn how much human and veterinary
medicine have in common.” Some may say because there are several diseases shared between
animals and humans that animal testing is a necessary step in creating medicine. Animals may be
very similar to humans but they are not the best way to test. Animals and Humans may have
similar diseases but the way they are treated are different. Human tissues are a direct reflection
of how a new drug may react with humans. “Industry executives say that as much as 25 percent
of the drugs tested on animals failed to show side effects that later proved serious enough to
prevent the drugs from being marketed. To avoid such mistakes, companies often test products
on multiple species and large numbers of animals.” says Feder. Clearly animal testing does not
work one-hundred percent of the time. The worst part about animal testing is companies test
more and more animals on one product just to avoid mistakes (Feder 1). Animals should not be
obligated to go through horrible pain while testing new drugs for humans. No matter how many
diseases are found in both humans and animals, animals are not the best way to test new products
used by humans.
The similarity between animals and humans is a very valid point. Human cells are best
way to test products when dealing with human used products. By using human cells to test
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products, the results that show are relevant to human beings because human cells were the object
tested on. In figure B to the right, the evolution of
in vitro methods of testing is shown. This shows
that animal testing was the only option sixty years
ago. And in the past fifteen to twenty-five years
human cells testing and animal testing shared the
market. But the method that will take over the
market is human cells testing. To test Barnaby
Figure B
Feder states that “Human skin, eyes, the lining of the throat — snippets of these and other tissues
are now routinely grown in test tubes from donated human cells. The goal is not to patch up
ailing people but to use the human tissues in place of mice, dogs or other lab animals for testing
new drugs, cosmetics and other products.” As Barnaby stated human tissues are grown from
donated human cells. The making of tissues is complicated but also it reduces or eliminates the
use of animals for testing. People even donate themselves to get micro doses of a certain
products to be analyzed (Feder 1). Because of all the alternatives for animal testing that are
available, animal testing should already be abolished. There is no reason to torture animals when
the best way to test products dealing with humans is by human cells.
Animal testing is inhumane and must be illegal in all fifty states. It is unethical to put
millions of animals in pain. Animal test results mislead researchers’ decisions regarding cures.
Also animal testing is not relevant to human health. Some people may say that animals and
humans share many of the same diseases. What they do not know about are the new techniques
used to test different products and/or find cures for diseases. Testing of animals is not the best
choice for new drugs and other projects. Animals must not encounter the pain, loneliness or lack
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of freedom that comes from living in a testing lab. No human being would even think of having
to be put through the circumstances animals involved in testing are put through. And that is why
humans think animal testing is perfectly fine. The next time someone buys shampoo or any
product, he/she must look at the label and check if such product was tested on animals. If that
product was tested on animals and that person buys it still, he/she should be put through the same
circumstances of the animal that was tested on in order to market such product.