The Inevitability of Animal Testing in Medicine

Dan Wang(Irene) Animal test in medicine is inevitable In 1960s, about 10,000 babies who have short and malfunctioned legs and arms were born, surprising the public and scientists. People were worried and anxious to know the reason for the tragedy and the way to avoid the birth of defect babies. After many researches, scientists found out that the disabled babies were born to the mother who had taken a medicine called Thalidomide, a drug people used to deal with pregnant reaction, and was later proved to have teratogenicity to many animals by animal test. Then, people realized that animal test must be done before the drug used in treatment to avoid such accident. After several decades, animal test is still inevitable because it helps improve the medical science and is irreplaceable in medical science. Some people disagree with animal test because they think animal is crucial and not fair to animals. However, they may not fully understand the meaning of the animal test and the irreplaceability of animal test in medical science.

First of all, animal test is the most effective experimental method in medical science. Animal test is still the most reliable method because animals share many commons with human. For instance, the rats share about 90% of human genes and humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical. So, most of the physiological reactions happened in human body and animal body are the same. Thus, the results of test animal are reliable in most cases. Moreover, the importance of animal test has been proved by the achievements obtained by using animal test. As we know, all kinds of new drugs need animal test to prove that they are non-toxic before they are used in treatment. By using animal test, more than 20 kinds of new drugs are introduced to the market every year in USA. If we don’t use animal test, volunteers would be the only way to test drugs. However, the number of volunteers is limited, because it is very difficult to