Animal Testing Persuasive Essay

Animal testing can be dated back to the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans. Physicians would dissect animals with the pure interest to obtain knowledge. But even then, one such physician stated that he would rather use a pig as his subject because he wanted to, “ avoid seeing the unpleasant expression of an ape” (Monamy 9). The ethics of animal testing has always been questioned. Humans do not want to think of animals as on the same level of us. The similarity is terrifying and makes the cruelty obvious. When discussing the idea of Animal Testing, there are generally two trains of thought: one who is against it for the animals sake, and the other who argue it's for the name of science. Even though it may seem like we need animal testing
Another example of failed animal research drugs is, “The Thalidomide Tragedy”. a widely used drug in the late 1950s and early 1960s for the treatment of nausea in pregnant women. Within a few years of the widespread use of thalidomide in Europe, Australia, and Japan, approximately 10,000 children were born with phocomelia, leading to the ban of thalidomide in most countries in 1961 (Kim,Scialli). After having failed to come up with consistent data that the drug was safe to use on humans, scientists were only able to get similar results after the dose was between 25 to 300 times more on the animals than for humans. (Safer medicines). The reason the drug failed was because the scientists conducting the experiment failed to consider the physiological differences between humans and animals. Yes, animals and humans may share similar genes in certain parts of the body, but it's unrealistic to solely rely on a group of rabbits to determine whether a drug is safe and effective for a human baby. The two aren't even remotely comparable, which is why the Thalidomide tragedy is such a prime example of ignorance to acknowledge the fact that animals and humans are different, and therefore human drugs should not be created through unnecessary and ineffective