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Itzel Soto

ENGL 1302-480

Dr. Hanan Saadi

29 July 2023

Animal Testing Validity

For centuries, starting back since Aristotle, many people have been doing testings and

experiments on animals for many scientific researches and purposes. Some may feel that animal

testings is reliable and necessary, whereas others believe it’s unethical and should find other

alternatives. The reasons for animal testing is for human healthcare to improve and to allow

scientists to find effects and solutions on certain outcomes of diseases, and etc without testing on

humans. (Roberts 8) However, most animal experiments go way beyond the safety procedures

and are illegal which is unethical in many ways. (Gruber 12) Most people are for animal

experiments as it can improve humans overall health by testing on a live creature that is not a

human. Whereas, most people are against animal experiments as it is unethical because alive

animals being tested have rights. (Sonali 8) Moreover, animal testing can be beneficial to human

healthcare by developing medicine (etc) for humans without testing on humans; nonetheless,

animal testing is unethical because animals are live creatures with rights that are being tested

which could lead to mislead horrific results and humans don’t have the rights to go beyond the

safety procedures to the extreme on hurting live creatures.

Animal testing, according to researchers, has been a common practice and has helped

most scientists to understand how to treat and prevent various conditions or diseases. Animal

testing to certain extent limits can be unethical, however according to scholars Roberts and

Barbara Orlans state that animal experimentation has been beneficial to today’s biology and have
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been able to medically advance in treating patients with diseases or conditions. It can even help

out animals with fighting their own new diseases or outbreaks. Animal experimentation helps us

find a reason a certain disease is causing a certain symptom and then find solutions to help

improve. Roberts provides unsystematic reviews on how animal testing can be beneficial to

human health. In this research, he proves how with certain safety procedures and still following

the new legal rules we can still safely test. Testing on animals can be beneficial where humans

don’t have to test on humans and cause any harm to them. Animal testing is reliable and is the

quickest and easiest way to test products. According to research, animals have been useful and

have contributed to various major advances in biology and treating diseases. For instance, to

make sure the Covid-19 vaccine was safe to inject there was many trials on mice. After several

tries, researchers have finally successfully created a vaccine that is reliable and safe for humans

to be injected with. So, animal testing has proved to show that it’s beneficial to human health

care in developing vaccines and cures. n

Regardless of how beneficial animal testing can be for humans, it is unethical because

animals being tested have rights. (Sonali 6) Alive animals being tested against their will is

against the law. Most experiments lead to horrific results and numbers state that most animal

losses are to experimentations which is morally wrong. Most experiments are painful and cause

prolonged damage to the live animals which is not right. Hajar, a researcher, states that one of the

experiments back in the 1950’s with the drug fiasco with thalidomide caused several deaths of

animals that were being tested and caused one of the most unnecessary and unethical animal

testing of all. Animal testing is inhumane and cruel to poor innocent animals who have to die

being tested. Most experiments are flawed which causes the deaths and wastes animal lives.

(Liebsich, 7) Animals shouldn’t be getting tested against their will, according to the new laws.
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In addition, many scientists are breaking the law and going the extreme with most animal

experiments. There have been various cases where animal testing have gone wrong and just

causes more problems. Animal testing, overall, is morally wrong and should not be used in

research to be experimented on certain products that can cause harm. (Sonali 9) According to the

statistics, it takes about tons of thousands of animals to be tested on different experiments to pass

just “one test.” This is very unethical and morally wrong. The Animal Welfare Act only protects

certain animals, which do not include mice, rats and birds. Studies have found that animal

testings create incorrect data, and drugs that pass through animals are not reliable for humans.

Either way, testing on animals is not right. Scholars suggest that researchers should find

alternative ways to test new products besides it being on animals.

All in all, animal testing can be beneficial but unethical at the same time. Scholars

provide various studies and statistics to show how animal experimentations are useless every

year, but how it can be useful depending on what the testing is about. This topic is necessary

because many people believe animal testing is normal and nothing morally wrong happens.

When behind closed doors there have been horrific results and deaths of animals that have been

treated poorly. If people, continue to have an open mind to animal testings, they can see how

unethical it can be or how useful in a way it can be. With this paper, scholars and researchers

should use this analysis research essay to think about the pros and cons of animal testing. By

either implementing laws, acts, excluding animal testing or find better alternatives for testing

new products or find treatments for diseases. Therefore, animal testing is either beneficial or

unethical for various reasons.

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Annotated Bibliography

Sonali K. Doke, Shashikant C. Dhawale. Alternatives to animal testing: A review. Saudi

Pharmaceutical Journal. Volume 23, Issue 3, 2015.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsps.2013.11.002.

Hajar R. Animal testing and medicine. Heart Views. 2011 Jan;12(1):42. doi:

10.4103/1995-705X.81548. PMID: 21731811; PMCID: PMC3123518.

Liebsch, M., Grune, B., Seiler, A. et al. Alternatives to animal testing: current status and future

perspectives. Arch Toxicol 85, 841–858 (2011).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-011-0718-x

Gruber, F. P. and Hartung, T. (2004) “Alternatives to animal experimentation in basic research”,

ALTEX - Alternatives to animal experimentation, 21(Supp. 1), pp. 3–31. Available at:

https://www.altex.org/index.php/altex/article/view/2182 (Accessed: 22 July 2023).

Roberts I, Kwan I, Evans P, Haig S. Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare?

Observations from a systematic review of international animal experiments on fluid

resuscitation BMJ 2002; 324 :474 doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7335.474

Orlans, Barbara. Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. In the Name of Science.

Harro, Jaanus. Animal models of Depression: pros and cons. Springerlink.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00441-018-2973-0

Taylor, Allison., et al. The value of animal test information in environmental control decisions.

Wiley Online Library. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1993.tb00740.xCi

Meigs, Lucy., et al. Animal testing and its alternatives - the most important omics and is

economics. Alternatives to animal experimentation. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14573/altex.1807041
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Madden JC, Enoch SJ, Paini A, Cronin MTD. A Review of In Silico Tools as Alternatives to

Animal Testing: Principles, Resources and Applications. Alternatives to Laboratory

Animals. 2020;48(4):146-172. doi:10.1177/0261192920965977