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Animal Testing should be banned

Hannah C. Salcedo

Ateneo de Naga University Junior High School

English 10

Ms. Lorena A. Hayalin

April 30, 2023

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Introduction

Did you know? More than 115 million animals worldwide are used in laboratory

experiments every year (About Animal Testing, n.d.). Animals are usually killed once an

experiment is done to examine their tissues and organs. Animal testing is a procedure

that is done in a laboratory experiment using animals to further research about medical

treatments to various conditions or diseases of humans and animals. In order for the

safety of humans, it is being tested first in animals.

This paper aims to raise awareness about animal testing around the world and

fight for the rights of animals. It explains the process of how animal testing makes

animals suffer and how it should be stopped. Second, despite the benefit of it finding

solutions or treatments for diseases, we should still not tolerate and let it continue in the

scientific experiment field because every animal still has the right to live. It concludes

with the advocacy of making this earth a safe place and a safe home for animals.

Although Animal testing benefited researchers in finding treatments in various

conditions of humans, animal testing should be banned because it’s cruel to animals,

95% of the experiment fails, and it’s wasteful. This paper argues that animal testing

should be illegalized and be banned. This paper will also explain the issue of animal

testing, its statistic and evidence base on the studies conducted, and if it’s reliable

enough to mimic how human body respond to chemical, drugs, or treatments then goes

to its wastefulness, and to potential alternative way to animal testing.

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Animal Testing — A fatal dose

Animal testing is cruel because of how it causes suppression and distress to

animals for scientific purposes and they aren’t even protected by Animal Welfare Act.

The statistics of animals that suffer and die each year is 115 million, and the commonly

animals used are cats, dogs, rabbits, beagles, and monkey, whereas 80% of animals

used in the lab is birds, mice and rats. Animals are forced to undergo horrific and painful

procedure such as harmful chemicals are being injected in their bodies, shoved up unto

their nostrils, forced upon their throats and even in their eyes. They also experience

being addicted to drugs and exposure to toxic substances which makes them deprive,

burned, stapled, blinded and prone to disease viruses (The Cruelty of Lab Animal

Testing | Down to Earth Organic and Natural, n.d.).

These animals doesn’t have the freedom and they are subject to stress and

deprivation. They are not able to live as nature intended because they are usually

locked up in cage and their rights to fully live a fulfilled life as an animal is not justly

right. The stigma of people seeing animal don’t have feelings and emotions that are

being justified is just for human’s desires resulting to abuse and harsh conditions.

Animals are not only affected with pain but they’re also vulnerable to psychological

effects bought by the repeated denial of choice of people. It takes sufficient cause for

people to reconsider and empathize with their state as they are solely focus on their

own being. Once this situation is being normalized, such insensitivity to animal’s

suffering and pain can follow.

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Animal Testing’s Failure in Human Clinical Trials

Animal testing is a faulty science because the percentage of failure of drugs that

advances to human clinical trial is high. The situation always comes out as a failure

because most of the medications that were safe in animals might be found toxic for

humans. The medication that were tested for humans aren’t effective as they are

expected to be. Animals are used in experiments for human clinical trial test because

they are similar to humans at a physiological and anatomical level. Animals like mice

and monkey have the same organs as humans from cardiovascular, nervous, and

respiratory systems etc. It enables researches to make up studies for specific diseases

such as atherosclerosis for rabbits and polio for monkey (Science, Medicine, and

Animals, 1991, pg.3). Considering in the biological reason, it is still a fact that most of it

is a failure.

The unreliability of animal experimentation across the wide range of areas still

undergoes a heat debate. Animal experimentation usually harms humans through false

safety studies, the possibility of abandonment of advantageous therapeutics, and

direction of resources away from better testing methods. A survey published in 2008 of

statements given in animal experimentation shows how it could not be validated as a

necessary step in biomedical research (Akhtar, 2015). Human diseases are usually

complex making it harder for animal models to get standardized results which limits their

usefulness. It asserts that it may still fail because of the disparities between animal

experimental model and the human condition complexity (Akhtar, 2015).

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Further examples of repeated failures

An example of human suffering resulting from animal experimentation was six

human volunteers were injected in 2006 with an immunomodulatory drug, TGN 1412.

When TGN 1412 was first tested in animals, such as mice, rats, and rabbits it has no ill

effects but when it was tested on humans it has an opposite effect. In the middle of

taking the experimental drug, all of the volunteers experienced a severe adverse

reaction resulting from a life-threatening cytokine to dampen the immune system

(Akhtar, 2015).

Medical discoveries are being delayed because researchers waste money, time,

and effort just for it to fail. An example of noteworthy research is the development of

polio vaccine. Researchers spent decades infenting non-human primates with the

disease, and have been having other animal experiments but they failed to produce a

vaccine. The solution, which led directly to the vaccine and a Nobel Prize, this occurred

when researchers formed the virus in human cell cultures in vitro (Problems with Animal

Research, n.d.).

Furthermore, the effort they’ve been putting using animal testing to further

expand their use in this field is useless, to influence their laboratories and to secure

research funds, it is very common for researchers to have endless experiments for the

sake of the discoveries. Yet, this type of research won’t prosper much as they are

expected to be, because the percentage to help, develop and improve human life is

small (Problems with Animal Research, n.d.).

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Animal Testing and its wastefulness

Animal testing is a worldwide, multi-billion dollar industry that costs

taxpayers billion of dollars annually that’s why it is considered as wasteful. It wastes

resources, time and money that could be spent on more promising effective

experiments. Animal testing does not only waste money but also affects the

environment. We know that they don’t only dispose animals but they also dispose food

waste, dangerous chemicals and various supplies that is used in the procedure.

According to National Institutes of Health (NIH) the wasted things from their

facilities is totaled 1.5 million pounds from 2011 to 2013. Since it’s necessary for millions

of animals to be fed for research it subjects to harm the agricultural processes that harm

the environment. It is linked to environmental damage, one example of this is the NIH

Maryland-based labs spent over half a million of dollars to feed the animals in 18-month

period (Shroff, 2016).

Animal Testing is expensive, yet it has no use. An examples of these costly

animal experimentation are Rat 24-month cancer bioassay that costs $700,000,

whereas a Rabbit pyrogen test range from $475 to $990 and for Chromosome

aberration it costs $30,000 (Cost of Animal and Non-Animal Testing, n.d.). This asserts

that we should educate the people about the negative consequences of these because

of how costly it is and wasteful to environment. This argues that we should develop

solutions like friendly environmental and human alternatives for animal testing.
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Animal Testing and its benefit in medical field

Although most of the animal testing procedure fail in human clinical trials, some

of the studies and research conducted were successful to humans. An example of this

was a heart surgery that was conducted during the 19th century. During that time,

physicians have a little amount of resources of treatments for heart diseases (Science,

Medicine, and Animals, 1991, pg.5). Researchers in 1930s tried experimenting with

animals which results to the development of a pump that could circulate and aerate the

blood. It’s a complicated task because they need to have the knowledge of transfusions,

constituents of the blood, and blood clotting. During 1953, a successful modern era of

open-heart surgery was made because they are able to successfully do an operation

using a heart-lung machine that was performed on a human being (Science, Medicine,

and Animals, 1991, pg.7).

In the present time, heart surgery has been a great movement for the

improvement of lives of people. The number of people who undergo different kinds of

cardiovascular operations and procedures is 3 million in united states each year

(Science, Medicine, and Animals, 1991, pg.7). Animal research has contributed a lot in

medical field as surgical procedures, insulin, nutrition supplements, and psychoactive

drugs etc. have been tested first in animals before being used in humans. It is still in

fact, that the use of animal in laboratory experiments has some successful results and it

has the potential to combat such human illnesses and diseases in the future.
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Animal Testing and its issue

Although it has successful results in treating various diseases we cannot still

deny the fact that its negative side outweighs its benefits. From its poorly experiments

results, it’s time consuming, expensive, unethical and not effective enough to be the

solution to be a cure for human health related issues. Animals do not even reflect

human diversity as we cannot predict the outcome of the experiment because of the

inaccurate match of the its biology and it even involves human diseases making it more

complicated. The scientific community have been suggesting alternative way to create a

cruelty free environment here on earth.

Animal Testing and its alternative ways

As said by Dr. Elias Zerhouni “We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies

for use in humans to understand disease in biology in humans”. People said that it is

necessary for animals to be used in experiment but we can experiment without using

these animals (Alternatives to Animal Testing, n.d.).Such examples of alternative ways

that works is Vitro Testing, which organs-on-chips that has human cell grown it is the

way to mimic the structure and function of human system. The chips can be used

instead of animals for drug testing, disease research etc. Second, is Computer (Silico)

Modeling, researchers made computer models to stimulate the biology of human for

progression of developing diseases (Alternatives to Animal Testing, n.d.). Other

examples of alternative procedures are human-patient simulators and cells and tissue

cultures.
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Conclusion

Using animals in research scientific experiment field should be banned

and stopped. Animals are being exploited by research facilities making it a cruel

environment for them. The one who benefit from these experiments are the companies,

cosmetic industry, and such more. The pain and suffering of the animals are not worthy

enough to be the benefit of humans because 95% of the experiment fails, resulting it to

a wastefulness and a time consuming process. This makes animal testing unnecessary

because there are alternatives available.

Whether, using animal testing or not, the goal of the researchers is to find cure or

treatments for various diseases or illness and build a safety products before being used

by humans. Within this desire, the outlook is to have an enhancement for the

evolvement of technology in scientific experiment for the benefit of humanity. Therefore,

with this situation we’re given a choice to choose the better option. Should we rely on

animal testing? or choose the alternatives given to us. Given the alternatives that we

can use, it is a better option for the sake of the animal rights. We can make processes

in this world without cruelty, pain, and suffering for our respect to animals.
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References

Akhtar, A. (2015). The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation. NCBI.

Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/

Costs of Animal and Non-Animal Testing. (n.d.). Humane Society International.

Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://www.hsi.org/news-media/time_and_cost/

How Have Animals Contributed to Improving Human Health? | Science, Medicine, and

Animals. (n.d.). The National Academies Press. Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/10089/chapter/4#7

In Vitro Methods and More Animal Testing Alternatives. (n.d.). PETA. Retrieved April 30,

2023, from

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-anima

l-testing/

Problems with Animal Research. (n.d.). American Anti-Vivisection Society. Retrieved

April 30, 2023, from https://aavs.org/animals-science/problems-animal-research/

Shroff, J. (2016, November 15). The Significant Impact of Animal Testing on the

Environment. Jai Shroff's Blog. Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://jaishroff.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/the-significant-impact-of-animal-testin

g-on-the-environment/
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The Cruelty of Lab Animal Testing. (n.d.). Down to Earth Organic and Natural. Retrieved

April 30, 2023, from

https://www.downtoearth.org/innocent-animals/animal-testing/cruelty-lab-animal-t

esting

Using animals in experiments. (n.d.). Humane Society. Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/animals-used-experiments-faq

Why Are Animals Used in Research? | Science, Medicine, and Animals. (n.d.). The

National Academies Press. Retrieved April 30, 2023, from

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/10089/chapter/3