Every year, more than one-hundred animals including rats, frogs, cats, rabbits, dogs, mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, and fish are killed in United States laboratories for medical training, biology lessons, curiosity-driven experimentations, and drug, food, chemical as well as cosmetic testing. Although these animals are distant from humans, they share several genetic and physiological similarities with humans. For this reason, animal experimentation has been used to further medical science the proponents of animal testing argue that it is ethical if suffering is reduced in every experiment and that the human benefits obtained could not be attained in any other way. However, animal testing is unethical and in most cases unnecessary. Not only does it inflict tremendous suffering and pain on the animals, but the results are also unreliable and not validated. Moreover, animal experimentation undermines the moral status of an animal.
Animal testing results in suffering and pain to millions of defenseless animals. Prior to their deaths, some are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, others are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others have holes drilled into their skulls as well as others have their skins burned off or their spines crumpled. These practices are extremely unethical given the fact that experimenters perform the procedures on living creatures. Proponents of animal testing argue that reducing the pain of the testing procedure makes the testing ethical. However, after these cruel testing, the effect of pain reduction drugs usually feds off. Therefore, there is no way to eliminate the pain. The only thing the drugs do is to delay it. Both the experimenters and proponents of animal experimentation are not prepared to perform these tests on an infant even if that was the only way to save the world. They will consider it inhuman and unethical. Hence, the use of nonhuman animals in animal testing amounts to unjustified discrimination based on species. In additions, animals need freedom just like humans. Apart from the torment of the actual testing, animals experimentations deprive animals everything that is natural and crucial to them. Most laboratories are confined to barren cages psychologically traumatized and socially isolated 1 . Treated the animals just as if any other disposable laboratory equipment results in vicious suffering that cannot be reduced in any way. As such, there are no grounds to declare such acts ethical. The sentencing of thinking and feeling animals to live in laboratories amounts to slavery and intentionally cause them fear, lowliness, suffering, and pain, which is in every aspect unethical.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
In most instances, animal testing results are not only unreliable but also dangerous to humans. Those in favor of animal experimentation cite how it has alleviated people’s suffering as a result, of the medical advance obtained in testing labs. However, this is not the case at all most of these results are not validated or proved to work for human being and therefore failures of animal testing have adversely affected people. For instance, the 1960’s thalidomide drug meant to aid stop morning sickness in pregnant women caused close ten-thousand congenital disabilities as well as thousands of fetal deaths globally. The drug was tested on many animal species before it was released for mass consumption. The outcomes of animal experimentation do not transfer to human beings. For example, according to National Cancer Institute of the United States mice cancer has been cured for decades, but the cure has failed to work in humans. Moreover, as of 2010, at least eighty-five HIV/AIDs vaccines were successful in nonhuman primate studies. However, each of the nearly two-hundred therapeutic and preventive trials did not yield results in human trials. Despite failing to prevent the development of AIDs in people, it made them more susceptible to the disease. Statistically, ninety-two percent of drugs tested in vitro and on animals do not proceed past phase 1 of human clinical trials, which includes determining reaction, effectiveness and side effects of the drug’s dosage. Irrespective of such evidence, animal testing has not been stopped or illegalized. Millions of animals are sentenced to a miserable death for researchers that do not yield any improvement in the medical sector. In addition, the conduct of the institutions that carry out such research does not meet ethical standards. Results of animal testing from most of these institutions vary and are easily manipulated. According to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine journal, many universities often exaggerate results from animal tests carried out in laboratories. Moreover, they promote research that has vague, unclear relevance to human health and do not avail crucial facts neither do they acknowledge limitations 2 . In most instances, the experimenters rarely avail results of failed animal experimentation. As such, the public and other scientists lack ready access to information of ineffectiveness of these animal testing. Not only do the experimenters lie to the public, but also knowingly continue to kill and confine millions of animals to carry out experiments that do not have absolute relevance to human health. Hence, the grounds on which animals testing can be declared ethical are very limited given that both the procedure of these experiments and the institutions that carry them out do not meet moral standards.
When looking at the animal testing, one of the ethical issues that arise is the question of an animal’s moral status. Many people agree that an animal has at least some moral status. That is why they do not abuse or needlessly hurt pets and other animals such as cows, donkeys or horses. Animal testing undermines the moral status that every animal is entitled to irrespective of its species. Proponents of animal experimentation view animals as a mere object that can be used for any research as long as it benefits humankind. However, this is unethical since all animals have equivalent moral status to that of human beings. Hence, they are entitled to equal treatment. Based on evolutionary, the difference between humans and animals exists only on degree 3 . Moreover, animals and humans share a crucial source of moral status that is the similarity in brain activity and bodily reaction to fear and pain. Killing animals and forcing them into human service or otherwise treating them as a way to further man’s goals violates their moral status and the rights that come with this status. Furthermore, giving animals less moral status than human’s amounts to speciesism prejudice. Supporters of animal testing have innate tendency to consider human species morally relevant since they belong to it. However, this behavior is morally condemnable. Belonging to a particular species or race does not grant one any grounds for allocating lower moral status to outsiders. In the same way, the fact that people are human is not sufficient ground to proclaim any animal less morally significant.
Conclusion
Animal testing is a cruel and an inhumane way of torture and killing animals for humankind’s benefit. It is not only unethical but also unnecessary. It inflicts tremendous suffering and pain on the animals, only to give unreliable and results. In addition, animal testing undermines the moral status of an animal. In modern times, there are no grounds to declare animal testing ethical considering that less abusive tests are available. For instance, computer modeling enhanced statistical designs and the Murine Local Lymph Node Assay (LLNA) are human and non-intrusive methods that yield results that are more accurate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daniel Cressey "Noninvasive Medical Imaging Could Cut Lab Animal Use, Improve Data Quality," Scientific American , June 29, 2011.
New Internationalist Magazine "Is Animal Testing Necessary to Advance Medical Research?" June 2011
Pacelle, Wayne. The bond: Our kinship with animals, our call to defend them . Harper Collins, 2011.
Peter Mansell "Research Funders Call for Closer Attention to Guidelines on Reporting Animal Studies," PharmaTimes , May 22, 2012.
Roscoe Bartlett "Ending Experimentation on Chimpanzees Is Right Choice," The Hill , June 12, 2012.
American Anti-Vivisection Society. "Animal Research Is Unethical and Scientifically Unnecessary." Animal Experimentation . Ed. Susan C. Hunnicutt. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Rpt. from "Problems with Animal Research." 2011. Opposing Viewpoints in Context . Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
Paul Root Wolpe "Ethical Limits to Bioengineering Animals," Gene Watch , April 2011.
Resnik, David B. "What is ethics in research & why is it important." In ideas . 2015.
