Some animals today are used for testing new medicines and things to see if they will be safe for humans to use. If the test goes well and it seems like humans can use it safely the product passes. If after testing an animal dies or is hurt or the product doesn’t work it fails. This is where the question comes in of this all being morally right. Harming animals so that we gain knowledge and do not harm any humans. Even with these benefits to animal testing should we still do it?
95% of animals used in experiments are not protected by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, and cold-blooded animals such as reptiles and most fish. A 2011 poll of nearly 1,000 biomedical scientists conducted by the science journal Nature found that more than 90% “agreed that the use of animals in research is essential.”
In 1997, researchers Joseph and Charles Vacanti grew a human “ear” seeded from implanted cow cartilage cells on the back of a living mouse to explore the possibility of fabricating body parts for plastic and reconstructive surgery. This shows how with animal testing we can discover things we would not be able to without.
My conclusion is that animal testing although may not be nice for some of the animals is a necessary thing that must be done to further science and make the world safer.
The topic you chose is very controversial and brought up a lot in today’s age due to PETA becoming more influential and the testing methods being released to the public. However, maybe you could have gone more into depth on what procedures are done to the animals and whether they are done inhumanly. For example, do the animals experience high levels of pain or die a slow death? Also, how often does an animal die following an experiment and are animals necessary in all testing? Are our bodies similar to that of a rat or bird? What determines what animals are chosen for the experiments? You could include any laws that are put into place that protect the animals rights or an alternate option for experiments. You could start on the PETA website http://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/why-animal-rights/.
Hi, I think doing experiment on animial is kind of necessary for discover. However, scientists should reduce the hazard on animal as low as possible. I believe there is an old saying that all the outstanding achievement was build on the base of sacrifice. For example the freedom of a country rely on lots of people sacrifice their life on the battle field. Like I said the step of discovery science shouldn’t stop, but we really shou respect the animals’ life. Reduce the pain as low as possible. Here is a link may interest you. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml
I am an animal-lover just like the next person. But there are definitely some things to think about when it comes to animal testing. Would we much rather have animals be the ones tested on and harmed or have our children and loved ones be the ones harmed by products that were not thoroughly tested? I think that some experiments are very bad for some animal’s health and that’s why I think that instead of just jumping right into testing an unfinished product on the nearest animal, there should be a series of intense pre-experiments that don’t include the animals to see whether or not the unfinished product is more or less likely to harm the animals the product is being tested on. If the product is most likely to harm the animal, then they should be forced to go back into the lab and make a few changes to the product. They should have to keep doing this process until the product, although unfinished, is less likely to harm the animals its being tested on. This way, we can ensure that more animals are safe when being tested on for product development.
To grow a human ear on the back of a mouse sounds terrible and I would like to know if there is any other way to test certain experiments, maybe in people who volunteer because they have a choice and its not fair that these animals don’t. I also believe that an interesting experiment would be to do a study and find out how many of animals involved in scientific testing die or are injured/harmed from it.