Institutionalized Abuse: The Harsh Realities of Animal Testing
***WARNING: This essay contains images that may be difficult to look at.
“After three dogs were forced to ingest a test substance every day for five days at Charles River Laboratories, they experienced labored breathing and a high heart rate. They became cold to the touch, were not able to be aroused and were seen with the test substance in their mouths and on their bodies. One dog died and the other two were euthanized one to two days later.
This account, provided by the Humane Society of the United States, is just one example of the suffering experienced by animals used for testing. Not only does animal testing inflict pain upon innocent creatures, it is often ineffective due to physiological differences between the animals undergoing the procedure and the humans for whom the treatments are intended. For these reasons, animal testing should be abolished and replaced with more human-relevant procedures.
“The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’”
— Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation
Although animals are not capable of the level of intelligence and reasoning possessed by humans, they are still able to feel both physical pain and psychological distress. For example, caged macaques who have no companions will sometimes begin to injure themselves by biting, which is a pathological sign of distress as a result of isolation (Animal Welfare Institute).
As many testing procedures are painful, there is no doubt that the animals involved suffer. Testing victims are infected with dangerous pathogens, exposed to chemicals that burn the skin, forcibly restrained, deprived of food and water, and put through other painful procedures. How can anyone with compassion for other beings allow this to continue?
Inflicting painful wounds just to study how they heal would be considered animal abuse if done to a domestic animal, so why is it allowed in laboratories? It’s time to end the cruelty and search for a better alternative.
The majority of laboratory animals are used for drug and chemical safety assessments before the substances are made available to humans. The number of substances that can be tested is limited, however, due to the simple fact that the animals these substances are tested on are not humans. They are physiologically different, and thus the results from these experiments may not correctly predict a substance’s effect on a human.
The Diabetes Research Institute discovered in 2006, after 30 years of experimentation on rodents, that the pancreatic cells of the mice and rats being tested on were so different from human pancreatic cells that the information gathered was unreliable (Akhtar). Three decades of experiments on mice and rats, and their suffering was in vain. It is unfortunately common for the differences in human and animal physiology to affect the outcome of the tests. 90% of candidate medicines that appear safe and effective during animal trials fail when administered to humans (HSI).
Another reason that animal testing is ineffective is because animals do not suffer from the disease being researched. In order to test a cure, the symptoms must be artificially created in the animal. Creating the symptoms does not create the physiological processes that lead to the disease’s natural occurrence in humans. For example, strokes are induced in laboratories by either clamping off major blood vessels or inserting a clot, to mimic the way in which strokes occur in humans. This process does not include the underlying conditions that lead to strokes, such as heart health, age, and family history. Over 150 stroke drugs that succeeded in the animal model failed in human trials (Akhtar).
Hoping that animal trials will correctly model human diseases or the effect of substances on humans is not enough. We must concentrate our efforts to find alternatives that are more human-relevant and that do not cause excessive suffering in our fellow creatures.
Some may argue that animal testing is necessary for medical progress, since it has been a part of medical history for centuries. The method has inherent flaws, however, given the differences between animals and humans. In the effort to make our use of animals in research more ethical, scientists have come up with three Rs: replacement, which refers to using methods that do not involve animals instead of methods that do, reduction, which refers to obtaining information using fewer animals, and refinement, which refers to the minimization of pain and the use of non-invasive techniques.
Obviously replacement is the best choice if we are to end animal testing, although the other two Rs are important steps. Some methods that could be used instead of animal testing include computer simulations, stem cell testing, and microdosing, which means giving humans very low doses of a drug to test its effect without affecting the entire body (NEAVS). All of these methods are more human-relevant than animal testing, and thus would be more effective when studying a disease or testing a substance.
Although animal testing may further disease and chemical research, it has been discovered to be less effective than other methods, not the mention the pain and distress it inflicts on the victims. If the question regarding laboratory animals is ‘Can they suffer?’ then the answer is an absolute yes, and therefore we have an obligation to protect their rights as living things. It’s time to abolish animal testing and move toward a better future both for scientific research and for the animals that become the victims of experimentation.
Works Cited
“About Animal Testing.” Humane Society International. Humane Society International, n.d.
Web. 27 Mar. 2016.
“Harm and Suffering.” Animals In Research. NEAVS, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
“Examples of Severe Animal Suffering in Laboratories.” The Humane Society of the United
States. The Humane Society of the United States, 25 June 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
Akhtar, Aysha, M.D. “Why Animal Experimentation Doesn’t Work.” Huffpost Science.
Huffington Post, 27 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
Roberts, Sheila. “Stress and Distress.” Stress and Distress. Institute of Animal Technology, Aug.
2006. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
“Alternatives In Testing.” Alternatives. NEAVS, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
Product Testing on a Rabbit. Digital image. Animal Testing. Vegan Peace, n.d. Web. 27 Mar.
2016.
Burn experiment on a beagle. Digital image. Animal Experimentation. Animal Friends, n.d. Web.
27 Mar. 2016
ENPA anti-animal testing campaign. Digital image. Animal Testing. Animals Australia, 28 May 2014. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
