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Animal research : Yay or Nay?
Animal research, commonly known as animal testing, has been popular amongst researchers
and animal rights activists. For centuries, millions of people have countered painful diseases and
death using powerful medical drugs and treatments. This incredible gift of medicine and other would
not be possible without animal testing. Despite these overwhelming benefits, however, some people
are calling for animal research to be banned because of alleged cruelty. From this point of view, it
involves living creatures just as humans are; yet again, it is the safest way to test drugs and their
reactions to certain actions before using them on humans. The problem lays in each person’s point
of view. Does animal research involve violent procedures? Do animals experience pain and suffer
when tested? What parameters are there for animal research? With much speculation, this topic has
become a very intriguing argument. Therefore, this essay will thoroughly examine argument
favouring animal research.

The earliest references to animal testing are traced back to the 2nd and 4th centuries in the
writings of the Greeks. Aristotle and Erasistratus were among the first to perform experiments on
living animals. From this point onwards, animal testing steadily began to be a popular method for
evolving medicine regarding the rapid evolution of various deadly diseases worldwide. Benefits from
using this method have widely been recognized all over the world. For example, animal research was
essential for the development of Herceptin and Tamoxifen [1], two medicines that have saved the
lives of thousands of women and men with breast cancer. Sir Howard Florey discovered penicillin,
the popular antibiotic that has saved millions of lives, by testing on bacteria-infected mice. Another
example is the targeted drug ‘imantinib’, which cures people with chronic myeloid leukaemia, were
carried out in mice. The development of antibody treatments for cancer has also relied on animal
research. Antibodies are molecules designed to recognise and target cancer cells, and early research
in mice helped to find a way to produce vast quantities of these molecules to be used to treat
patients. Regarding these incredible achievements in medicines using animal research, more and
more research are about to be conducted in the future to cure the incurable in the present, such as
HIV/AIDS.

Unfortunately, animal research activists around the globe, claiming that those life-changing
medicines could be made using other alternative methods, bombarded these incredible discoveries
afterwards. Researchers were baffled to hear this because they could not have discovered the drug
without animal research. They answered that human testing is much more risky and inhuman
because much of those research conducted to animals lead to mutation and death. Additionally,
they would not discover anything if the drug have not been tested, therefore the safest way to
achieve this without harming humans is by animal testing. From my point of view, this statement
proves ultimately that animal research is essential for the discovery of certain medicines. Imagine a
world without penicillin; millions of people would suffer major infection from minor injuries, thus
leading to death.

On the other hand, numerous animal rights activists are currently striving and struggling to
combat animal research. Ethical issues they pose include inflicting both physical pain as well as
psychological distress and suffering on large numbers of innocent creatures. In extreme cases,
animals are killed in purpose to examine a part of their body without pity and compassion (for
instance; fetus and kidney). According to Peter Singers’ Animal Liberation, animals cannot report
their feelings to understandable human language in the same manner as human communication, but
observation of their behaviour provides a reasonable indication as to the extent of their pain. The
behavioral signs include writhing, facial expressions, moaning, screaming or other forms of calling,
attempts to avoid the source of the pain, appearance of fear when repeated, and so on. This
behaviour is much like our behaviour on pain. To clarify this point of view, a doctor and a medic who
share no common language with their patients can still understand the indicators of pain the
patients have.

Off the record, I too would agree to these substantial notes regarding the feeling of pain in
animals. However, if the usage of animals were to be switched by humans, countless people would
die and suffer various illnesses when tested. For example, particularly in the 20th century, there
have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have
been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent,
or informed consent of the test subjects. The experiments include the infection of people with
deadly or incapacitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human
radiation experiments, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical
experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a
wide variety of others. For this very reason, inflicting pain to non-humans is more preferable than
inflicting pain to humans themselves (for the same effects and results). Additionally, animals do not
have rights; therefore, it is acceptable to experiment on them. Animals do not have the cognitive
ability or moral judgment that humans do and because of this they have been treated differently
than humans by nearly every culture throughout recorded history. As an illustration, all humans
would have to become vegetarians and hunting would need to be outlawed if we granted animals
rights.

Aside from the ethical issues they pose—they claim that animal tests do not correctly
predict real-world human reactions. According to a survey conducted by PETA (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals), ninety two percent of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in
animals fail in human clinical trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. For this reason, many
people are sceptical about animal research, since the rate of success is not satisfying. Examples of
failure in animal research are numerous; however, the most catastrophic failure was the tragedy of
thalidomide. Thalidomide had been prescribed to pregnant women to help reduce morning sickness,
but tragically, it turned out to be toxic to developing fetuses. As a result, the drug thalidomide
caused an estimated 10,000 birth defects and thousands of fetal deaths worldwide, and the
surviving affected fetuses suffered from phocomelia (a failure for the limbs to develop). Although
this maybe true, there would be another explanation to why this particular failure occurred. In
contrast to animal extremists’ opinions, the thalidomide disaster shows a need for more animal
testing, not less. If thalidomide had been properly tested on pregnant animals, its potential for
causing severe birth defects would have been discovered before the drug became legal for human
use. [2] Further testing on animals showed that the drug induced birth defects in mice and other
animals, hence proving that there is no reason to cease proper animal research in the present.

Because of this continuous research held by scientists worldwide, animal rights activists
began to push governors in order to set new ground rules for animal research. As of 1959, The Three
Rs (3Rs) in relation to science are guiding principles for more ethical use of animals in testing. W. M.
S. Russell and R. L. Burch first described them in 1959. The 3Rs stands for replacement, reduction
and refinement. Replacement is the preferred use of methods excluding animals over animal
methods if possible, reduction is the use of methods that minimize the quantity of animals used, and
refinement is the use of methods that minimize potential pain and suffering on animals. For this
reason, numerous laboratories undergoing animal research became more ethical, less inhuman and
more discipline. Personally, I agree to these terms because not only research can still be done, but
also knock off animal rights activists from interfering the research. Moreover, it is wise to set ground
rules before the act to anticipate any damage/issues ahead.

At the present, conditions are not what we expected to be. More and more animal rights
activists keep halting the process, thus producing a new problem to the medical world. However,
humans altogether are ignoring the fact that a large part of animal deaths originate from food. To
put this into perspective, relatively few animals are used in research, which is a small price to pay for
advancing medical progress. In reality, people in the United States eat 9 billion chickens and 150
million cattle, pigs and sheep annually, yet animal research only use around 26 million animals for
research, 95% of which are rodents, birds and fish. [3] People eat more than 1,800 times the number
of pigs than the number used in research, and we consume more than 340 chickens for every
research animal. [4]In other words, people care more about their stomachs rather than medical
advancement using animal research.

A point often overlooked is that some cosmetics and health care products must be tested on
animals to ensure their safety. For example, an average American women use 12 personal care
products per day, so product safety is of great importance. This concludes that people, particularly
who use cosmetics, are prone to product defects without animal testing. Surely, the government has
already approved this law. As a matter of fact, the US Food and Drug Administration endorses the
use of animal tests on cosmetics to "assure the safety of a product or ingredient." [5] Similarly, a
majority of biologists and several of the largest biomedical and health organizations in the United
States endorse animal testing. According to a 2011 poll conducted by the science
journal Nature, more than 90% "agreed that the use of animals in research is essential." [6] Thus, with
the unpopular and unacknowledged support of the government/health organizations, animal
research will continue its quest to discover and explore other symptoms and effects on new drugs,
improve human health and help researchers find drugs and treatments.

All in all, it is true that animal research has helped us in the past, and their potential power
to discover other medicines for incurable diseases. Although it might seem sadistic, cruel, unethical
and inhuman, the benefits of animal research do not lie. It is however, important to note the
limitations that certain methods should cover the three Rs (3Rs), thus reassuring people that animal
testing is beneficial for long-term medical development.
Reference:

Festing S. and Wilkinson R., 2007. The Ethics of Animal Research. EMBO reports.
Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990.

1 : Breast cancer treatment, understandinganimalresearch.org.uk (Accessed Dec. 12, 2014)

2 : Pro-Test, "Frequently Asked Questions," pro-test.org.uk (accessed Dec. 10, 2014)
3 : The Hastings Center, "Fact Sheet: Animals Used in Research in the
U.S.,"animalresearch.thehastingscenter.org (accessed Nov.30, 2014)
4 : Speaking of Research, "US Statistics," speakingofresearch.com (accessed Oct. 15, 2013)
5 : US Food and Drug Administration, "Animal Testing and Cosmetics," fda.gov