Should SAnimal Testing be banned?

I. Introduction

Cosmetics, food, and medicines, what does these thing have in common? The

answer is animal testing. Most of our everyday products were tested on animals before

we even got it in our hands. We have no idea how this animals are being used as a test

object. However, there are small amount of companies that selling cruelty-free products

but comparing it to those that does animal testing, it’s still very minimal.

According to crueltyfreenation.org, animal testing is a scientific experiment

wherein human uses animals as their variable and do things would be likely damaging

and harmful for the animals. One example of animal testing is feeding, injecting, and

forcing animals to intake different chemicals that would be potentially harmful and

dangerous to the health of the animals (What is animal testing?, n.d.). According to the

mentioned website, animals that are for experiments are bred for experimental

purposes. Monkeys are also captured from the wild and caged in laboratories to use as

a variable for tests. Animal testing is most prevalent in Medical laboratories. By animal

testing, scientist can use the animal as a variable for testing experimented drugs before

releasing into the market. Of course, scientists would have to test the effectiveness and

safeness of a medicine that humans will be consuming.

This has been an ethical issue that has been addressed so many times by

different organizations such as People for Ethical Treatment for Animals or PETA.

According to Liou (2010), most animals are not different from humans for they can feel

pain and experience pleasure and therefore, animals and humans must receive the
same treatment. I do personally believe that animals deserve better and thus must not

be used as an experimental variable. Assessing the situation, animal testing can be

avoided as much as possible and we can research for other alternatives rather than

testing things to animals.

II. Counter Arguments

Animal testing has saved so many lives and created cure for different diseases.

Without animal testing, there would also be no cure to diseases that can be easily

cured. Animal testing contributed to a breakthrough of biomedical researches. In the

end, animal testing prevents laboratories from using human subjects as their testing

variable. Like what I’ve said earlier, medicines need to be tested first before being

released for public’s use.

According to speakingforresearch.com, Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest

diseases way back in 1900’s. By the year of 1947, soil microbiologists Stephen

Waksman and Albert Schatz injected bacteria to guinea pigs that are infected with TB

and in the end that is when the medicine for TB was made (Medical Benefits, n.d.).

There are also law that protects human subject from being used as an experiment

variable that will expose them into a potentially harmful chemical. According to World

Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, instead of risking a life of a human subject,

animal testing is the way to go.

However, animal tested medicines don’t necessarily guarantee that a medicine is

safe. Given the prevalent animal tested medicines, it still doesn’t give the best result. If

ever scientists are going to put an animal to harm, they better come up with the best
result since animal can also feel pain and experience pleasure. Scientists must be able

to make the tested product worth the suffering of an animal. Another thing is that there

are innovations now that can be used as a substitute to animal testing without breaking

the law that protects human subjects.

According to Fintel et.al.(2009), the medicine, Thalidomide is a sedative that was

popular within Americans way back the post-war era. But a tragedy happened when

10,000 babies were born with Phocomelia, a condition where the limbs of the babies are

shortening or they are not born with it at all. Phocomelia was caused by Thalidomide

when pregnant women took the sedative, causing the child to be born with disability.

Thalidomide was tested with animals, yet when it was taken with pregnant women,

something bad happen because animal testing cannot guarantee the safeness of a

medicine. There are also scientific advances that can be used to test experiments on

instead of using animals. Tissue culture is the technique when a live tissue is outside

the body, which can be used for testing (Abdulla, 1999).

III. Arguments

Animal testing is not really that reliable in predicting the effect of a component to

humans. If we look at in an anatomic way, our body is different than of animals. We

might share the same muscles and bones, but it differs in sizes and ratios. Our body

and an animal’s body differ in composition. Our body might react to chemicals differently

to animals. That is because our body is different to animal’s body. That is why it also

makes sense that results from animal testing might not be a very reliable data to infer

what could be the effect of medicines and products to human body.

 According to Dr. Nicholson’s interview with The Wall Street Journal, Animal’s

disease does not replicate human asthma. Animal model does not capture the airway

passage of a human. Dr. Nicholson also added that they have found a way to control

asthma to animals but it did not work for humans. (Rockoff, 2013). Akhtar (2017) added

that there are huge failure rates when it comes to animal testing, and the reason for it is

because human body composition is not the same with animal body composition. Going

back to the tragedy of Thalidomide, 10,000 babies were born with disability but

Thalidomide was tested to animals, and the problem is that it was not tested for

pregnant women. Animal model is not a good basis for human model.

Since our body is different to animals’ body and components may bring different

effects between animals and human, scientist might ignore not see a potentially cure for

many illnesses. Just like what I’ve said in my first argument, animal testing is not really

reliable in predicting a possible effect to human body. What if a component that fails in

animal testing is actually good for human body? Scientists might not even know it

because they focus on animal anatomy.

According to Trunell (2017), mice with sepsis were given a dosage of vitamin C,

but there was no effect to the mice’s body. But looking to the other view, human sepsis

can be treated by Vitamin C. It turns out that mice create their own vitamin C, making

the Vitamin C dosage given by the researcher no effect at all. Allen (2006) told in his

article that dozens of promising drugs gets taken away when it causes bad effects to the

animal subjects. He then added that Pfizer’s scientists gave a high dosage of Viagra to

mice and beagle, causing them to develop complications. But these effects to animals

are not even connected to the effects to human. Leist & Hartung (2013) stated that “the
low predictivity of animal experiments in research areas allowing direct comparisons of

mouse versus human data puts strong doubt on the usefulness of animal data as key

technology to predict human safety.”. It simply means that the data retrieved from

animal tests are even not enough to be compared with human data.

Lastly, animal testing is expensive and very costly. Most of the time, these tests

does not even give the results that scientists wanted, cause millions of dollar and time

going to waste. In animal testing, the scientists require so much equipments and time.

Equipments and different compounds are needed since these are used to give different

dosages to animals to get the wanted result. Time is also needed here because effects

of different chemicals to animals do not happen immediately. Scientists do a lot of

observation towards their variables and these experiments usually lasts for years and

years.

According to Francis Collins, the director of National Institute of health, there was

150 drugs that was tested in mice and turned out okay, however, when it was tested to

humans, it failed. That research costs billions of dollars and it all goes to wastes

because it was unsuccessful (Trunnell, 2017). According to Allen (2006), in many

cases, test goes fine in animals but in the end, the bad effect only surfaces when tested

to human. 500 million dollars are spent by drug industry just to be discarded at the end.

Humane Society Organization compared the prices of conducting animal testing versus

doing the tests in “in vitro”. “In vitro” is the technique of doing an experiment within a

controlled environment that is outside a living organism. In comparing the prices, in vitro

is relatively less expensive than animal testing. For example, testing a genetic toxicity of
Chromosome Aberration to animals costs 30,000 dollars while testing it using in vitro

technique costs 20,000 dollars. That is 10,000 dollars less than animal testing.

IV. Conclusion

Results from animal testing are not reliable enough to predict the effect of a

chemical to a human body. Since human body differs in many ways with animal body,

there are also different effects when a drug is taken by a variable. Some chemicals

might work for animals, but at the same time, it may not work for human. Since there

are different effects between human body and animal body, it might lead scientists to

discard potential cure for diseases. Since there are instances that a drug does not have

an effect to animals but it can tremendously affect the human body, scientist might

ignore this drug knowing it is a failed test. And at the end, these tests go to waste and

money also goes to waste. Animal testing is a very expensive procedure, but there are

less expensive ways to achieve a wanted result without having to torture animal

subjects.

In the end, we can infer that there are other ways that scientists and

pharmaceutical companies can reduce or even eliminate the use of animals as their

variables if they seek for alternative. Nowadays with technology progressing, there are

alternative ways to achieve better results with fraction of the price that they currently

spend. In my opinion, scientist must also consider first if the experiment is really worth

the life and the suffering of an animal. When an experiment test is assessed first,

potential wasting of money and time can be eliminated. We all want our medicines to
work effectively and target our concerned issue with our body, but animal testing needs

to be reduced, or maybe stopped when there are accessible alternative out there.

Sources:

What is animal testing?. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/what-animal-testing

Liou, S. (2010, July 6). The ethics of animal experimentation. Retrieved from
http://web.stanford.edu/group/hopes/cgi-bin/hopes_test/animal-research/

Medical benefits. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://speakingofresearch.com/facts/medical-

benefits/

Laws related to the protection of human subjects. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://history.nih.gov/about/timelines/helsinki.html

Fintel, B., Samaras, A. T. & Carias, E. (2009, July 28). The Thalidomide tragedy:
lessons for drug safety and regulation. Retrieved from
https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-
regulation

Abdulla, S. (1999, January 7), The animal experimentation debate: the science
angle. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/news/1999/990107/full/news990107-
1.html

Rockoff, J. D. (2013, June 18). Forget lab rats: testing asthma drugs on a
microchip. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545154163286708

Trunnell, E. (2017, September 7). The University of Pittsburgh is using taxpayer

dollars to conduct cruel and unnecessary animal experiments. Retrieved from
https://www.alternet.org/animal-rights/university-pittsburgh-using-taxpayer-dollars-
conduct-cruel-and-unnecessary-animal

Allen, A. (2006, June 1). Of mice or men: the problems with animal testing.
Retrieved from https://slate.com/technology/2006/06/does-animal-testing-work.html

Leist, M. & Hartung, T. (2013, March 19). Inflammatory findings on species

extrapolations: humans are definitely no 70-kg mice. Arch Toxicol. 87(4), 563–567.
doi: [10.1007/s00204-013-1038-0]