Animal Testing - Debating over the Animal Rights Movement

Debating over the animal rights movement has raised questions and concerns for many years. Although animal research has been the cause of many medical breakthroughs, is it morally and ethically right to put animals in these kinds of situations? This is one of the underlying questions that must be solved before it is too late. There has already been too much violence and harm caused by the opposing views of this argument. Shouts of protests and riots are heard on the streets, labs and medical equipment are being burned and destroyed and innocent animals are left hanging in the wake. While animal rights organizations fight for ways to treat animals. Animal research supporter strongly believe that animals unlock the key to curing and ailing diseases.

Animal Testing, defined as the use of animals in scientific experiments, are used for medical, drugs and cosmetics researches before they are marketed. The first ever animal testing dates back to 1768 by Joseph Wright, where he had placed a bird in an air pump for some scientific experiment. The earliest references to animal testing are found in writings of the Greeks in the second and fourth centuries BCE. Aristotle and Erasistratus were among the first to perform experiments on living animals.

In the last few centuries and still going, there have been many debates on whether people should use animals to test new drugs/cosmetics etc. Many people stand against this and had also made a lot of protesting about it; but no actions were taken. There are also some who like the idea of animal testing. Some of the few points they argue on is that animals that are used are better than humans, animal testing is considered to be the best way to try new products and drugs, and to effectively train medical students. Many new drugs for humans such as anaesthetics, antibiotics, antiseptics and vaccines, are the result of testing.

Animal testing has helped in discovering cures before or around the time we started taking cells from humans to help cure diseases. What's being used to help find a cure for AIDS then? Not pig cells, because no matter how close an animal is to the human cell structure, a human is a human. With the current technology we have today, we can simply extract cells from humans to be tested on rather than harming an animal to look for a cure that they couldn't care less about.

Like humans, animals have the same rights as us. Many people take advantage of these innocent animals because of this one simple reason; they don’t have the ability to speak. It’s true, people do not want to be tested on, but if that’s the case, why should we subject animals to do things we know that are not in our best interest? No rabbits want to suffer and then be killed because of some foolish Draize test.

There are a number of things that mankind can do to prevent this cruelty from continuing, it is simply a matter of taking the initiative to inform and involve yourself and others.
Every individual effort is a step towards the annihilation of animal cruelty.

By: Tina Nhan of Gilmore College for Girls