Bryan Fitzgerald

February 6, 2016
Adam Padgett
English 102
Should animals be used in medical testing?
Ever since I was little I have always been interested in the study of biology. I used to
watch various cartoons that often included a mad scientist that would experiment on various
creatures in the laboratory to enhance the creatures physical abilities and create a mutant race to
assist in their plot to destroy the world. For this reason, I often hated the idea of animals being
used in laboratories, but as I grew up and gained exposure to the real world, I realized things in
the laboratory were not so bad and animal research offers many benefits. Findings from studies
have influenced many advancements in the medical field which lead to cures being found for
many diseases. I have even experimented on some animals such as dissecting them in biology
class and analyzing movements of various small insects due to different factors. I have grown to
appreciate the positive findings that come from medical testing, however I still heard stories
about animals being abused in laboratory settings and this has left me wondering if animals
should or should not be used in medical research. Now, as a biology major on a pre-med track in
college, I have the opportunity to research this controversial topic before I continue my career as
a pre-med student.
The first source that I found on this topic is a news article from the Las Cruces Sun-News
written about a group of chimps that were used for research by scientists who neglected them and
treated them cruelly. The writer of this article advocates for animal rights. The major interest the

author had in writing this article was to prevent the chimps, who were freed from their harsh
testing environment, from being sent back to the same testing facility that neglected them in the
first place. This author is credible because he works for a newspaper which has everything
edited by another person before being published. This source contains a slight bias because the
author mainly points out animal cruelty facts, but the author also references facts related to the
benefits of using apes for testing because of their similarity to humans. Even with this point,
however, the author showed slight bias toward support of animal rights.
The second source I found is an excerpt from a book called The American Biology
Teacher written by a biology professor about the issue of animal rights and medical research.
The author gives his opinion on the subject and also gives examples of how medical research
with animals can benefit the society as a whole. The major claim of this excerpt is that animal
testing is necessary to solve the problems that people want solved in todays world, such as
controlling animal pests and to regulate the populations of various organisms in the wild. The
writer also points out that some things such as natural changes in viruses can only be studied in
living creatures, thus animals should be used in experimentation. Since the author is a biologist
and studies organisms in laboratories himself, he may have a bias towards using animals in
testing, but even with a bias this author is credible because he is an expert in the field of biology.
The third source that I found is a magazine article titled Is animal testing necessary to
advance medical research? and written for the New Internationalist on the issue of animal
medical testing. This source has two advocates writing for either side of the issue, one for animal
rights and one for the use of animals in testing. Both advocates give very convincing arguments
and often contradict one another. They both reference specific examples with the pro animal
rights advocate referencing things such as how we can find viable replacements for animals and

the pro testing advocate writing about the complexity of the human body only being comparable
to an animal.. The main point of releasing this article was to get the audience thinking on this
issue and also give arguments for both sides of this issue. This source is credible because both of
the advocates are experts in their respective fields and therefore they have the utmost knowledge
on both the benefits and disadvantages of medical research on animals.
This question is researchable because it has differing opinions on whether animals should
be used or not in medical testing. In the sources, there are clearly two sides to this argument with
contrasting views towards the issue, either referencing the benefits of animal testing or the
cruelty of animal neglect. The positions of my sources on this issue and evidence supporting
their claims influence my opinion greatly because I dont yet know which side I fall on in this
issue. In the future, I may narrow my question to highlight a specific issue that affects both sides
of the argument of animal rights to increase the amount of detail about this subject that I include
in my paper.