Is Animal Testing Ethical?

If you had to guess, how many animals do you think are used for scientific research?

• 2 million
• 10 million
• 100 million
• >100 million

In 2012, 118 million animals were used for experimentation, a 2.6% increase from 2005-2012.

Animal Testing is Ethical:

Contribution of animals

Simon Festing and Robin Wilkinson, Research Defense Society, refer animal research as a major role in many scientific and medical advances of the past century and a better quality of life people enjoy from these advances. Festing and Wilkinson wrote, “RDS considers that the use of animals in research can be ethically and morally justified, the benefits of animal research have been enormous and it would have severe consequences for public health and medical research if it were abandoned”. Its ethical to them due to scientific and medical advances.

Laurie Pycroft, one of the founders of Pro-test, refers to biomedical research as a difficult process and “without the ability to use animals in their research, scientists’ efforts would be massively, hampered, not only in the direct development of new treatments, but also in the fundamental research which underpins all biomedical knowledge”Clearly Pycroft, Festing and Wilkinson believe without the experimentation of animal testing, we wouldn’t be where were at today without it.

The list below didn’t exist without the experimentation of animals for scientific research.

Crestor (high cholesterol)

Synthroid (Enlarged thyroid; hypothyroidism)

Advair Diskus (Asthma; COPD flare-ups)

Ethical measurement

Professor V Baumans, Department of Laboratory Animal Science, wrote about animal testing to be ethical from a measurement.

He analyses an animal suffering in an experiment to be ethically right, when the benefit of the experiment outweighs the suffering of that animal.

Instead of Bauman picking a side, he weighs whether testing animals is ethical or not. He goes deep into an conversation to decide what is ethical and what isn’t, Bauman believes animal testing to be ethical, only if the requirements are met.

Later mentions 3 R’s as guiding principles for animal experimentation.

The 3 R's were made to create a better life for the use of animals on scientific research and play an important role at an ethical standpoint.

Animal-rights group ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) agree to performing animal testing with 3 R’s and states “The ASPCA believes that the 3 R’s (Reduction, Refinement and Replacement) are fundamental and should be applied to the use of animals in all aspects of biomedical research”. While most animal-rights groups would disagree with the statement, ASPCA believes animal research using the 3 R’s can be ethical if used properly.

Animals or humans

Pro Con, a controversial issue page covering major topics over the history of society, weighed pros and cons of animal testing by stating 13 claims. One pro claim was, alternative experiments without the use of a living system couldn’t provide the opportunity to study the nervous systems, immune systems or any other living system.

Alternative models such as computer models would only be effective if animal research were conducted to build the models in the beginning, the website later mentions.

A specific piece mentioned from Pro Con stated:

“Animals must be used in cases when ethical considerations prevent the use of human subjects.”

When it comes to testing medicine, logically every experiment done isn’t going to be easy or pain-free. Experiments of high caliber can have high risk towards humans. Rather than using humans for risky experiments, animals are ethically use as alternatives to testing new drugs and products.

Some experiments involve genetic manipulation, which essentially is selective breeding. A better definition would be the process of controlling an organism to produce desired traits.

Choosing humans to perform this test would not be acceptable in our society, as most if not all people would believe this as cruelty.

Animal testing is not Ethical

Necessary vs Ethical

While the necessity approach of animal research has been highly brought up, it doesn’t mean it’s ethical. People and scientists have deemed animal research necessary, but in regards of it being ethical, it doesn’t equal with one another.

Samual Garner, who wrote an article for the NPR refers if animals are necessary and if it’s a choice that we make, it would not be necessary in a sense that scientist chooses to perform on them. The fact scientists choose to use animals for experiments, means they can choose not to use them.

Since animals cannot give consent to research experiments, scientists feel they can use animals for experimentation because animals physically can’t speak their answer. When scientists do use animals for research, Garner stats:

“Most animals involved in research are killed at the termination of the experiment, are kept in conditions not conducive to their welfare, and are otherwise harmed in myriad and significant ways.”

Animals come in contact to many infectious diseases, physical injuries, and cancers in which the only option at the end is death.

Do you believe most animals are killed during and after experimentation?

Well known sources have attempted to answered this question, such as the Humane Society International stating animals at the termination of an experiment die most if not all the time after the experiment .

3 R's of animal testing isn’t being regulated enough because, refinement, one of the 3 R's of animal testing isn’t being used correctly. If refinement was a strong policy used on testing animals, then animals would suffer little as possible, and would also include proper housing to each animal. Since the 3 R's seem not to be used effectively, how can we conclude that testing animals is ethical?

Animals don’t have a choice

Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University claims

“Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment. . . .This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment.”

Animals are just like humans, they feel, think, and experience pain just like humans. Regan believes animal rights are violated because they don’t get a choice. When animals are subjects to dangerous experiments, they don’t have an option to participate or not.

Regan further says, that animals experimentation whether beneficial to humans or not is morally wrong because animal rights have been violated. This would conclude his belief to animal testing not to be ethical.

Since animals can’t choose whether they should be experimented on or not, do you think scientist should be allowed to do animal testing?

Alternative testing

Today, many non-animal testing procedures have been developed from many scientist due to the cruel, expensive, and generally inapplicable to humans, mentioned from Dr. Elias Zerhouni. Where she also says that animal testing hasn’t worked and it time we move on from using animals.

Alternative testing that could be used are followed:

• Computer Modeling, which simulates human biology
• human cells and tissues

Both alternatives separate the use of animals on scientific research and usually take less money to complete the experiment.

In addition, 97% of medical schools across the US have medical training with computer simulators, virtual-reality systems to replace animal laboratories. Which is a good indicator scientists could try to use alternative experiments without the use of animals. If scientists were to attempt experiments without animals, animal-rights groups and any person who is against animal testing would hopefully support their scientific research.

The Best Option

I believe the best the best way to keep the peace between people pro and against animal testing would to determine a policy where which animals can be used for scientific research. I would determine rats and mice to be the only animal used for experimentation. Their lifespan are relatively short and their contribution to humans are minimal if not any at all. This would eliminate any other animal to be tested and only rats and mice to potentially suffer, but keep advancing scientific research.

Not only create the policy above, but restructure the 3 R’s to be more effective to benefit each animal. There would be better housing for each subject, limit laboratories to a minimal amount of subjects, and require each laboratory to document every subject used, not used, and deaths per year from their research. This allows scientists to continue advancing medical treatment and medicine and animal-rights groups and others to hopefully be content with the progress made from the past till now.