A few years ago there was a very popular video on the internet about stopping animal testing. The name of the video was “Save Ralph” and some people may remember it. It sparked debates about animal testing, whether it should be banned or not.
Over 115 million animals including mice, rats, birds, fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, farm animals, dogs, cats and primates are used and killed in laboratories. There are many debates about whether it should be stopped or not. Some people say that animal testing is necessary for developing new products that are safe for human use, but some argue, saying that it’s inhumane and cruel. Some people view animals as equals and companions, while some put themselves above animals, either based on religious beliefs or their high position on the evolutionary chart. Here are my main arguments regarding the stopping of animal testing.
The first and most important con is that the testing is not reliable most of the time. Less than 2% of human illnesses occur naturally in animals, making animal testing an unreliable method for studying most diseases. Animal tests and human results agree less than half of the time. 94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials and sometimes are dangerous for humans. Here is an example of this — there was a sleeping pill thalidomide, which when tested on animals, including pregnant ones, showed no issues. But on humans it caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities.
Another example is the arthritis drug Vioxx that showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths on humans.
Animal testing, historically, may have benefited humans to some degree, but today, the animal testing models are obsolete, especially when there are more accurate methods available that do not require the pain and torture of animals. The first one is called in vitro testing, where scientists grow human cells in tubes or petri dishes and test products on those. Technological advancements in 3D printing allow the possibility for tissue bioprinting. If needed to be tested on eyes, there is a product called Eyetex, which resembles the way eyes react to products. And lastly it can be done on a computer to stimulate and estimate potential damage.
And of course it should be obvious that animal testing is cruel and evil. The pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any benefits to humans. Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do; in fact, their reactions to pain are identical. When animals are used for product toxicity testing or laboratory research, they are subjected to painful and sometimes deadly experiments. Two of the most commonly used tests are the Draize test and the LD50 test, both of which are famous for the intense pain and suffering they cause to experimental animals.
In conclusion, I think our world has had so much technological and scientific development, that animal testing is not necessary and should be banned. There are many alternatives that are cheaper and more reliable, also not affecting a living creature’s life or even stopping it. Doing cruel things to animals is never justified, they have as much rights to living peacfully and pain free as we do. At the end of the day, humans are animals too, and we have a responsibility to treat other living beings with compassion.
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