The Problem Of Testing Done Upon Animals Essay

A lot of organizations and individuals worldwide are nowadays concerned about the issues, related to the testing done upon animals. Around 100 million animals are involved into various types of tests and medical exercises annually. It is not possible to collect any exact information about the quantity of them, because rats, mice, birds, cold-blooded animals are most widely used for the testing, however, they do not belong to the sphere of influence of the Animal Welfare Act. Not many humans are aware of the fact that when they buy cosmetics or any kind of chemical products for their homes, millions of animals’ lives were also paid for this. The worst thing about those tests is that not all of them are necessary in reality, some of them are not able to provide exact results. Thus the problem of medical and other types of testing, done with the help of animals, is not purely the issues of medicine or chemistry, there is also a serious moral and ethical aspect, which should also be considered.

Medical science is complex and versatile and thus medical researchers are to do their best to conduct all the necessary procedures, in order to guarantee positive impact upon the patients. There are a lot of diseases and health flaws, which could be researched purely with the help of real living organisms. It is considered non-ethical to research human beings in most cases, thus it is logical to use animals. One of their most important advantages is the degree of their similarity to human beings in biological sense. There is a long list of diseases, which are the same as by humans, in addition animals’ short life cycles contribute to quicker results of various researches. In order to understand all the details, related to a concrete disease, it is necessary to create special life conditions for patients, seizing control over their diet, temperature of the environment and so on. It is much easier to do with animals, than with human patients.

There are a lot of researches of drugs and medical procedures, which could be done without involvement of animals at the beginning, however, the final stage, should be based upon practical implementation of these procedures and drugs, and it forces scientists still to use animals to study the effectiveness and safety of their inventions. Animal tests also contribute to pointing out of the possible complications from treatment along with possible solutions of these problems. Thus one of the strongest arguments for using animals for testing is related to medicine, as millions of human lives could be saved with the help of newly invented drugs or ways of treating of the diseases.

Most of the animals’ rights supporters do their best to attract attention of people towards the problems of vivisection, as they consider it to be legalized form of animal abuse, existing in this world. They try to inform people about the sufferings and terrible life conditions of those animals, which got to the laboratories, which have to spend their whole lives there in cages, experience various types of pain and suffering from disorders. Most of the experiments, which are made with the help of animals, lead to their death. The biggest percentage of the laboratory animals includes, as it was already mentioned, rats, mice, cold-blooded animals, still some tests are done upon rabbits, pigs, cats, dogs and monkeys. The variety of the experiments, done with the involvement of animals, is rather wide. These are medical tests, toxicity tests, cosmetics testing and so on. All the procedures are mostly painful and damaging, animals could be blinded, burnt, infected. Even lack of food or water often belongs to the protocols of the necessary procedures for the research. Tests for toxicity are done without breaks for recovery periods, thus animals are to suffer within months or even years. If an animal doesn’t die itself after the experiment is finished, it is allowed to kill it, only with the exception of chimpanzees. (“Harm and Suffering”, 2015).

A separate portion of experiments, done on animals, is based upon restricting of their moving, for example some parts of animals’ bodies are immobilized, like head, neck, legs or even the whole body. “For example, researchers at several major U.S. universities have all conducted “stress experiments” on rats and mice.” (“Harm and Suffering”, 2015). Such experiments were seen by the researchers as important for revealing of the new factors about human depression and anxiety disorders. A lot of attention is paid to experiments with anesthetization, the role of which could certainly not be underestimated for any sphere of medical science. Invention of anesthetization became a serious breakthrough in medical science and is nowadays widely in use. However, not many patients are aware of all the researches, which are preliminary done with the help of animals, in order to study the effects of anesthetization. If it is done not correctly, the paralyzing agent might deprive an animal of the possibility to move, however it might continue to experience pain, without the possibility to show it to the researcher.

Overall, the problem of medical or other types of testing done upon animals remains controversial, there are a lot of arguments, explaining the need of application of these tests and experiments, at the same time there are serious moral issues, involved, related to the fact that animals are not able to protect themselves and are to subdue to human beings completely; it seems to be not possible to find any immediate and concrete solution to all these controversies, however, there is a need to monitor the situation from various sides and put maximum of effort into finding the best possible compromise.

 

References:

Harm and Suffering. (2015). New England Anti-Vivisection Society

Why do scientists use animals in research? (2015). The American Physiological Society

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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