Instead, signs of these diseases are artificially induced in animals in laboratories in an attempt to mimic the human disease. Yet, such experiments belittle the complexity of human conditions which are affected by wide-ranging variables such as genetics, socio-economic factors, deeply-rooted psychological issues and different personal experiences.
The support for animal testing is based largely on anecdote and is not backed up, we believe, by the scientific evidence that is out there. Laboratories attempt to mitigate this suffering with the use of pain medications, sedation, and anesthesia. Another mitigation technique employed is that researchers set a limit to the level of suffering animal subjects will endure prior to euthanasia.
Once an animal reaches the predetermined level of suffering the animals will be humanely euthanized. Researchers that employ animal testing take measures to mitigate suffering in the animals on which they experiment. However, there are some experiments, such as pain studies, in which these methods of mitigation cannot be effectively applied. There are several alternative ways of evaluating the effectiveness of new drugs and procedures that do not involve animals.
The existence of these alternatives makes using animals in testing to meet the goals of people even more ethically problematic. The results of studies on animals are of limited use in assessing the value of health treatments for humans, and the vast majority of drugs tested on animals prove to be ineffective for treating human disease. This means millions of dollars are currently wasted on testing drugs that will end up being proven useless. Despite the millions of animal lives that are lost every year in support of scientific research, the results of these experiments often do not translate reliably to human subjects.
Not only do 90 percent of drugs that are successful in animal trials fail when applied to human volunteers, there is also a high likelihood that many drugs that fail during animal trials would have been successful in treating human disease. More than 40 countries, including Australia, Mexico, and Norway limit or outright ban animal testing for cosmetics. Animal testing in biomedical research is standard practice for researchers across the globe.
Specific regulations and laws pertaining to animal testing differ from country to country. A similarity among several countries is that they work to align with the 3 Rs replacement, reduction, and refinement. That is to say that most laws, guidelines, and regulations encourage researchers to replace animal subjects with alternative models when applicable, reduce the number of animals being used for a study, and refine their methods to reduce suffering.
Animal testing for cosmetic purposes has already been banned in several countries, but testing on animals in biomedical research is still largely standard practice. Animal experimenters are very aware of this ethical problem and acknowledge that experiments should be made as humane as possible. They also agree that it's wrong to use animals if alternative testing methods would produce equally valid results. The case for animal experiments is that they will produce such great benefits for humanity that it is morally acceptable to harm a few animals.
The equivalent case against is that the level of suffering and the number of animals involved are both so high that the benefits to humanity don't provide moral justification. The three Rs are a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals.
Animal experiments are not used to show that drugs are safe and effective in human beings - they cannot do that. Instead, they are used to help decide whether a particular drug should be tested on people. Animal experiments eliminate some potential drugs as either ineffective or too dangerous to use on human beings. If a drug passes the animal test it's then tested on a small human group before large scale clinical trials. We have 4 possible new drugs to cure HIV.
Drug A killed all the rats, mice and dogs. Drug B killed all the dogs and rats. Drug C killed all the mice and rats. Drug D was taken by all the animals up to huge doses with no ill effect. Question: Which of those drugs should we give to some healthy young human volunteers as the first dose to humans all other things being equal? To the undecided and non-prejudiced the answer is, of course, obvious.
It would also be obvious to a normal 12 year old child An alternative, acceptable answer would be, none of those drugs because even drug D could cause damage to humans. That is true, which is why Drug D would be given as a single, very small dose to human volunteers under tightly controlled and regulated conditions. Animal experiments only benefit human beings if their results are valid and can be applied to human beings. Moreover, a great deal of animal experimentation has been misleading and resulted in either withholding of drugs, sometimes for years, that were subsequently found to be highly beneficial to humans, or to the release and use of drugs that, though harmless to animals, have actually contributed to human suffering and death.
Animal rights extremists often portray those who experiment on animals as being so cruel as to have forfeited any own moral standing. But the argument is about whether the experiments are morally right or wrong. The general moral character of the experimenter is irrelevant.
The Draize test has been criticized for being unreliable and a needless waste of animal life. The LD50 test is used to test the dosage of a substance that is necessary to cause death in fifty percent of the animal subjects within a certain amount of time. To perform this test, the researchers hook the animals up to tubes that pump huge amounts of the test product into their stomachs until they die.
This test is extremely painful to the animals because death can take days or even weeks. According to Orlans, the animals suffer from "vomiting, diarrhea, paralysis, convulsion, and internal bleeding. Since death is the required endpoint, dying animals are not put out of their misery by euthanasia" The precision it purports to provide is an illusion because of uncontrollable biological variables" The use of the Draize test and the LD50 test to examine product toxicity has decreased over the past few years, but these tests have not been eliminated completely.
Thus, because animals are subjected to agonizing pain, suffering and death when they are used in laboratory and cosmetics testing, animal research must be stopped to prevent more waste of animal life. Finally, the testing of products on animals is completely unnecessary because viable alternatives are available. Many cosmetic companies, for example, have sought better ways to test their products without the use of animal subjects.
In Against Animal Testing , a pamphlet published by The Body Shop, a well-known cosmetics and bath-product company based in London, the development of products that "use natural ingredients, like bananas and Basil nut oil, as well as others with a long history of safe human usage" is advocated instead of testing on animals 3. Furthermore, the Draize test has become practically obsolete because of the development of a synthetic cellular tissue that closely resembles human skin.
Researchers can test the potential damage that a product can do to the skin by using this artificial "skin" instead of testing on animals. Another alternative to this test is a product called Eyetex. This synthetic material turns opaque when a product damages it, closely resembling the way that a real eye reacts to harmful substances. Computers have also been used to simulate and estimate the potential damage that a product or chemical can cause, and human tissues and cells have been used to examine the effects of harmful substances.
In another method, in vitro testing, cellular tests are done inside a test tube. All of these tests have been proven to be useful and reliable alternatives to testing products on live animals.
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