Do You Agree to Do Medical Experiments on Animals? Argumentative Essay Example

It is reported that an estimated 127 million are used annually in experimental research all over the world. Animals are used to come up with medical treatments, establish the toxic level of medication and assess if medical products are safe for human use. Experimental research on animals has been present since the 500 BC (Resnik 2011).

In 1981 the Silver Spring Monkeys case a student named Alex Pacheco started working in the Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR). The institute had 17 monkeys that were living in cages. The monkeys were subjected to food deprivation, use of electric shock and surgeries which damaged their spinal nerves making one or more of their limbs inactive. The imprisonment experiment was traumatizing such that the monkeys started ripping their own flesh. Alex noted down and took photographs of all that was happening. The case was brought to the attention of the authorities, and in 1981 the first ever arrest and criminal conviction for cruelty to animals occurred.

Animal experimentations should not be practiced because they are unkind and inflict a lot of pain on the animals and no excuse is enough to justify the suffering that animals are exposed to.

Refuting arguments

Animal testing is mainly conducted because animals and people suffer from similar illnesses and animals can stand in place of humans for a number of diseases. It can be argued that animal testing has led to many life-saving cures and treatments. The California Biomedical Research Association has reported that almost all the medical breakthroughs in the past 100 years can be directly linked to research using animals. The discovery of insulin used to save diabetics lives can be attributed to experiments which had dogs pancreases removed. The polio vaccination which has greatly reduced the global occurrence to less than 100 in 2016 from 350,000 was first tested on animals (Chapman 2010). Animal experimentation can also be commended for the advances in understanding and treating conditions such as malaria, childhood, leukemia, breast cancer, tuberculosis, brain injury, multiple sclerosis and many others. Animal research has also led to the development of cardiac valve substitutes, pacemakers, and anesthetics. Biochemists have been able to come up with synthetic body organs that be used to undertake this tests easily give this results more accurate results. Therefore, there is no need of using animals in to attain these results.

Animals are also said to benefit significantly from the results of animals experimentations. Some research specialists state that if vaccines were not tested on animals then a lot of animals would have died from feline leukemia, distemper, anthrax, tetanus, rabies and canine parvovirus. Animal testing has also helped in saving some of the species facing extinction such as the black-footed ferret, tamarins of Brazil and the California condor.

Some scientists say that there is no adequate substitute to test on the whole body system. Human beings and animals have very complex systems, unlike any other living things. The study of cells in Petri dishes might sometimes not give a chance to understand the interrelated processes that will occur in the immune system, endocrine system and the central nervous system. In the evaluation of drug side effects, a circulatory system is required to carry medicine to different organs. There are also some conditions such as high blood pressure and blondness which cannot be studied in tissues cultures. Alternative testing methods are now available, and animal experimentation should be stopped with immediate effect.

Main Argument

I think under no circumstances should animal experimentation be accepted. First of all animal experiments lead to forced inhalation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, food and water deprivation, infliction of burns, and force-feeding. For example, we have the Draize eye test conducted by cosmetic companies which involve forcefully holding the eyelids of rabbits open for days such that they cannot even blink. Another instance is the use of lethal dose 50 whereby the test is conducted to find out which chemical will kill 50% of the animals used in the experiment. All these actions are very cruel and inhumane to the animals and should not be allowed.

The drugs that give positive results during animal experimentation might not necessarily be safe. In the 1950s a sleeping pill known as thalidomide which led to more than 10,000 being born with some deformities had been tested on animals before it was released. Thalidomide was used on several animals such as cats, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs and mice again and it didnt show any side effects unless administered in large quantities (Paramveer 2010). There was also another test of a drug known as Vioxx which was tested on mice and showed that it had a protective effect on the heart but then it went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and cardiac deaths. There are some major differences between animals and human beings and therefore, we should stop hiding behind the idea that animals suffer same illnesses as humans.

Animals experimentation have been said to mislead researchers into overlooking the likely cures and treatments. This is mainly because some chemicals are harmful or ineffective on animals might give positive results when used by humans such as aspirin which affects some animals. Intravenous vitamin C is used in the treatment of sepsis in humans, but when used on mice it shows no changes. A drug such as Fk-506 which is used to reduce the risk of organ plant rejection was nearly banned because it has shown negative results in animals experiments. Therefore, using animals as tests might be causing a lot of suffering in humans because some curing drugs might have been ditched because they cause problems in animals.

Animals experimentation has been proved to be much more expensive than alternative methods. A study conducted by the Humane Society International compared animal tests and in vitro tests and discovered that animal tests are much more costly. Biotechnology companies have come up with cheaper options such as the synthetic liver which can be used to predict the livers metabolic reactions to drugs. The synthetic liver gives them faster and more accurate results than the animal experimentations. In one of the tests using the synthetic livers, the results gave the specificity that would have taken about 100 dogs and 1,000 rats. In 2016 the US government spent over $7.3 million on animal experimentation. Some of these tests consume a lot of money but fail to give any helpful results. Animal tests are expensive and a waste of taxpayers money and should be discouraged.

Conclusion

Animal experimentations are unkind and inflict a lot of pain on the animals and there is no reason to justify the suffering that animals are exposed to. At the moment millions of animals are locked in cages in laboratories worldwide. These animals suffer in pain, frustration, loneliness and long for freedom. These animals are enduring traumatic experiences such that they showing distressing actions such as spinning in circles, biting themselves or pulling out their own fur (Kilkenny, et al. 2011). There are a lot of methods testing methods available that dont require the use of animals. Most of these methods have proved to be cheaper and less expensive than animal tests. We all have a role we can play in ensuring that animals dont undergo this cruelty. We can join hands and donate to a charity that doesn't experiment on animals, demand implementation of humane tests that dont involve animals, calling out companies engaging in animals experimentation and buying animal cruelty-free products.

Works Cited

Chapman, Michael H., et al. "Severe, acute liver injury and khat leaves." New England Journal of Medicine 362.17 (2010): 1642-1644.

Kilkenny, Carol, et al. "Animal research: reporting in vivo experiments: the ARRIVE guidelines." British journal of pharmacology 160.7 (2010): 1577-1579.

Paramveer, S. D., et al. "Effective alternative methods of LD50 help to save number of experimental animals." Journal of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research 2.6 (2010): 450-453.

Resnik, David B. "What is ethics in research & why is it important." The national. 2011.