Pros And Cons Of Animal Testing

The question whether it is necessary to talk about the rights of the mouse when it goes about saving lives of newly-born babies is not as simple as it may seem. “Animals versus humans” dichotomy makes many people debate about the ethical, legal and scientific aspects of animal testing. Opponents of animal testing argue that these experiments cause immense psychological and physical pain to animals and thus should be banned, while others highlight the public attention that animal testing can save a great number of human lives as this method provides scientists with much valuable information that cannot be received in any other way. Nevertheless, the reasons for the total prohibition of animal testing overweigh the claims of its proponents and
They argue that the majority of effective modern drugs were invented only due to the fact that scientists had an opportunity to conduct experiments on animals. Cancer and HIVS drugs are some of the most important examples that are usually given by proponents of animal testing. However, this claim has some significant flaws. First of all, it is necessary to say that the research conducted to get remedies against such illnesses as cancer or HIVS occupies only a small fraction of the general animal testing cases. In most cases the substances received with the help of animal experimentation are never approved to be further used by humans. Around 90 per cent of drugs that pass tests on animals fail in case of real human illnesses (Sepahban & Walker, 2015). Some proportion of this research is also done for such irrelevant goods as beauty products, etc. Secondly, animal testing is one of the most expensive experimental methods and if these funds would be directed to the existing alternative methods, they would make a much more significant contribution to the improvement of human health (Murnaghan,
They claim that animals provide the closest match to humans and thus can be a valuable source of information about the development of many diseases. Nevertheless, although it is impossible to refute certain likeness between animals and humans, but the similarity between a mouse and a baby is obviously not enough to talk about significant reliability of the data obtained in this way. The fundamental flaw of animal testing is that scientists do not study the right species and thus results can be vague and unpredictable. Moreover, modern science offers a substantial variety of methods that can grant similar or even better reliability than animal testing. For instance, a large number of cell-based tests and tissue models are available for all spheres of medical research (Hester & Harrison, 2006). Some laboratories, such as Harvard’s Wyss Institute, rely on the method called “organs-on-chips” that contain human cells designed to mimic the reactions and functions of real human organs (Hester & Harrison, 2006). These methods are proven to be effective and reliable and can easily substitute animal