Should Animal Testing Be Stopped?

Animals, ranging from mice to chimpanzees, have been widely capitalized on for the purpose of scientific research. Nevertheless, it is apparent that this method has long been in the center of criticism and stirring up a never-ending debate within the public. On one hand, animal testing is, up to a point, morally cruel and unwarranted. On the other hand, omitting animals completely from the laboratory would impede understanding of biology and hinder the progress of creating vital medical treatments.

There are several strands of arguments advocating the conduct of animal experimentation with sensible points. First of all, it is undeniable that animal experimentation has contributed immensely to the discovery of various life-saving cures and treatments. A telling example for such medical breakthrough is, without doubt polio vaccine. Polio vaccine has been recorded to reduce global occurrence of the disease from 350000 cases to 223 cases in 2012. In a way, animals make better research subjects than humans do owing to shorter life cycles. The mere sight of finding satisfying substitutions to animals is already incredibly challenging once we take into account the fact that animals bear striking resemblance to human-beings both in behaviors and cell structures. Because animals are so genetically similar to humans, they are susceptible to many of the same health conditions. Thereby, if a drug passes the animal test, it's subsequently tested on a small human group before mass scale clinical trials to ensure safety.

However, the merits of animal-based experiments can not hold back the emerging wave of opposition against the horrendous harm done to animals. They accuse researches conducted on animal models of being ineffective and even dangerous. One of the raised theses is that despite possessing biological similarity, animals are not prone to as many diseases as humans, namely cancer, Parkinson's disease, and schizophrenia. As a matter of fact, there are a great deal of diseases artificially induced into animals in an attempt to simulate those of us. This act is proclaimed to belittle the intricacy of human conditions which are affected by wide-ranging variables. For instance, Vioxx, a drug used to treat arthritis, was found to be benign on monkeys, yet was estimated to cause around 320000 heart attacks and strokes worldwide.

To summarize, ones subscribe to the notion that animals can be taken as resources intended for the sake of humans and the world development as a whole, although meanwhile it is certain that the suffering could be controlled to the minimum by avoiding invasive surgery as well as exploitation of this research method.

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