MORAL AND PRACTICAL DILEMMA OF ANIMAL TESTING IN THE MEDICAL

FIELD

A Position Paper

presented to

High School Department

Malayan Colleges Mindanao
General Douglas MacArthur Highway,
Matina, Davao City

by

Alvez, Duane Laurence Clint E.

Antenor II, Vonn Mark O.
Mangubat, Melchizedek D.
Olegario, Hazel Nicole F.
Ortiz, Kate Aldela S.

NOVEMBER 2022

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 Mapua Malayan Colleges Mindanao
Senior High School Department
General Douglas, MacArthur Highway,
Matina, Davao City 8000

Animals have been used for as long as humans have existed for a variety of
functions, including food, transportation, pets, sports, recreation, and friendship. One of
the extended uses is the use of animals in research. Since a long time ago, many animals,
including mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits, fish (such as zebrafish and trout), birds (including
chicken), guinea pigs, amphibians (such as xenopus frogs), primates, dogs, cats, and
others, have been employed in research (CULABBR, 1988). Additionally, the major goal
of such investigations is drug testing and toxicological screenings that aid in the creation
of new treatments for infectious and non-infectious disorders. With the expansion of
medical technology research and development, more animals are being used in study
whereas animals are used to study the impact of surgical experiments and medical
operations. All throughout the world, millions of experimental animals are utilized each
year. In the UK, for instance, 3.71 million animals were utilized in research in 2011
(RSPCA, n.d.). According to estimates, there were 1,131,076 animals utilized in the USA
in 2009, compared to 2.13 million in Germany in 2001 (Rusche, 2003).

Animals' suffering, mortality, and misery during scientific studies have long been a
topic of controversy. Argument is made that since animals are living things with rights
against suffering, using them in experiments is unethical and must end (Rollin, 2003).
Thus, animal testing is crucial in the medical sector since it paved the way for the
development of today's life-saving vaccines, animals and people are biologically identical
and the medicines are equally useful to both humans and animals.

To start, commercial products such as drugs, cosmetics, pesticides, and food

additives are strictly regulated by law as they could pose a risk to human health and the
environment, but a number of these tests are conducted on animals in violation of their
rights (Galanes, 2010). While there is a consensus view that using animals in testing is

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unethical, there are still instances of immoral acts done in violation of animal rights.
Moreover, Galanes has stated in her paper an example in which shampoos are often
tested on the eyes of rabbits and in some cases, forcefully hold their eyelids open to test
the products absorption (2010).

Moving on, animal experimentation's limits and unreliability are becoming more
widely recognized. Drugs that pass preclinical investigations and even entail animal tests
that may be declared "vital" by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2004 have not
been commercialized, despite the high clinical rate of failure in drug development having
crossed 92% and risen close to 96%, due to the differences in the anatomy and
physiology between animals and humans (AKHTAR, 2015). Additionally, animals are
often given large doses of a potential drug to speed up the process, which can lead to
side effects that would not be seen in humans (Shanks, 2002). Animals in experiments
are usually kept in stressful and unnatural conditions, which can also impact the results
(Mendel, 1999). Also, intraperitoneal injections are a method that is a widely used
experimental technique in animal experiments and has provided apparent failures in the
laboratory experiments, it has a high failure rate of around 10%-20% (Gaines Das &
North, 2016). All these factors make it difficult to extrapolate results from animal
experiments to humans.

Lastly, animals do not get as many diseases, much less similar diseases as
humans. Humans are large and overly complex as compared to most other animals. In
line with this, humans get a lot more diseases from brain problems, bone problems,
muscle, and organ problems, etc. Studies show that around 92 percent of drugs tested
were safe to animals, but did not prove to be helpful to humans, and can even be harmful
at times (Otto, 2021). For instance, there was once a test in 2006 for cancer medication,
which was first tested in mice, and ended up with exceptionally satisfactory results. Yet,
when it was tested in humans, all the test subjects died due to multiple organs failing
(truTV, 2017, 0:01:57).

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 Despite all these complications associated with using animal testing, these
experiments tend to be helpful and even significantly advance current and future research
on drugs for a variety of reasons.

First off, the biological similarity between humans and animals is crucial for the
effectiveness of the drugs that are experimented on animals. Animal models have
astonishing similarities to humans in aspects of physiology and anatomy, which allows
researchers to explore an extensive range of mechanisms and judge novel therapies in
animal models before applying them to humans (Barré-Sinoussi & Montagutelli, 2015).
As stated in the same paper, animal models have been utilized by scientists to address
a varying degree of scientific questions, from basic to the development of novel vaccines,
or therapies, including designing, testing, and refining of many surgical techniques (Barré-
Sinoussi & Montagutelli, 2015). Also, the researchers asserted that the discoveries in
animal models have an influential role in medical research and have led to many Nobel
Prizes (Qin, Zhang, & Zhang, 2021). One example of the utilization and study of animal
models in contrast to humans is the neuroimaging and exploration of brain activity in
humans and animals. Researchers specializing in the field of neuroscience aimed to
further research how the human brain comprehends concepts which are divided into
coarse sets of categorical distinctions (Connolly et al., 2012). The study's materials
comprise human test participants and species chosen to represent a basic natural
hierarchy of three superordinate classes—insects, birds, and primates—as well as a
higher-level grouping of invertebrates and warm-blooded vertebrates. The method used
is Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in which stimuli, in this case being
imagery, is shown to the subjects and the data such as average voxel wise hemodynamic
responses, pattern classification, behavioral similarity judgements, etc., all formed into a
coherent data stream in which the researchers found out that behavioral, and cognitive
functions of humans and other animals are very similar (Connolly et al., 2012).

Furthermore, many present life-saving vaccines are made possible through animal
testing. In recent studies in the area of vaccines, significant breakthroughs were made to
improve quality control and release testing is done through animal testing. There were
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various alternative methods proposed by the Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)
and the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI) to put an end to arguments
for animal testing in their discussion. A major change to in vitro alternative methods from
in vivo vaccine release testing and characterization to comply with regulations from
different countries involved in the discussion, where animal testing methods were
considered out of date (Akkermans et al., 2020). Animals used as models for human
diseases help replicate the process in which a human encounters a disease like
poliomyelitis or hepatitis B. The study involved the use of animals like chimpanzees and
monkeys against these diseases. On this note, we consider genetically modified animals
like transgenic mice, which have shown about 99% of rememberable similarities to human
genomes. Furthermore, these genetically modified animals are not exact copies of human
diseases but have proven effective comparisons for scientists to develop treatments for
several human diseases, such as specific types of cancer like breast cancer and prostate
cancer. Although there were several studies that showed possible treatments for diseases
like diabetes, deafness, psychiatric disorders, neurodegenerative disorders, and some
types of cancer, it is still not possible to compare the different attributes and conditions of
animals to the overall human disease (Kehinde E., 2013). Today, animal testing remains
a subject that activists and scientists must address in the present, but newer innovative
technologies and methodologies pave a more desirable future for both men and animals.

Finally, the findings of animal testing are beneficial to both individuals and animals,
particularly when they lead to the development of drugs that are both efficacious and
reliable for use on both animals and people. Since the procedure for testing and licensing
a vaccine or a drug is meticulously done via innovations and improvements, vaccines that
are not licensed for human use can be utilized for veterinary purposes and vice versa
(Acampora, et al., 2008). For instance, the cancer medication, Gleevec, received
approval for usage in people in 2001. Later, though, it was discovered to be more efficient
in treating a particular form of cancer in dogs (London, 2009). Thus, the use of Gleevec
for dogs was consequently authorized by the FDA in 2009 (Druker, 2002). While not all
vaccinations developed on animals are safe for people, some of them can be useful for
disease prevention. As an illustration, the Hendra virus may be fatal to both people and
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animals (Middleton, 2014). There is a vaccine, nevertheless, that is authorized for use in
horses but may also be applied to people. It has been demonstrated that this vaccine
effectively shields people from the Hendra virus. Utilizing this vaccination can also lessen
the virus's ability to transfer from animals to people (Arkinstall, 2014). Although utilizing
this vaccination has certain risks, the advantages exceed the disadvantages.

Research on animals has been very helpful in determining how people will react
to a particular therapy. It is crucial to understand that when an intervention improves the
results of a meticulously designed experiment in any animal model, this proof of concept
is a crucial piece of evidence pointing to additional research. However, there is not
enough evidence to demonstrate that carefully planned animal experiments can more
accurately forecast the results of human trials. One of its benefits is that it provides a
model that can be used to test a sizable number of animals and acquire mechanistic
insights into the therapy that is being investigated. Additionally, it offers a system that can
be utilized to test various animals and acquire mechanistic insights into the therapy that
is being investigated. This allows for the very inexpensive study of several animals and
the investigation of various biochemical pathways using various reagents. Animal testing
is essential in the medical sector because all species benefit equally from medications
and because humans and animals have a biological core. It made it possible for modern,
life-saving vaccines to be created. It is well recognized that utilizing animals in research
may have both positive and negative outcomes. Moreover, the researchers believe that
the findings are applicable to a number of therapeutic modalities. The researchers argue
that regardless of the type of animal study used, the most important evidence for
predicting outcomes in human research to advance scientific knowledge and therapeutic
treatments is independent of animal studies. Additionally, the researchers believe that
some therapy techniques can benefit from the findings. With this in mind, the researchers
contend that the best way forward is to use animals as test subjects since they do offer
the most valuable information for forecasting the results of research experiments. This
will increase our knowledge of and creativity in therapeutic methods.

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Society Institute.

AKHTAR, A. (2015). The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation.

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Arkinstall, R., et al. (2014). Hendra virus vaccine, a one health approach to protecting
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