Ethical Issues With Animal Testing
Animals are used to test scientific developments and commercial products. New medical treatments are tested on animals to verify the toxicity of new medications or the safety of a product that will be used on humans. The health care and commercial industries also turn to animal testing for these reasons.
They say animal testing has contributed to many life saving cures and treatments. Experiments in which dogs had their pancreases removed led directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics. The polio vaccine, tested on animals, reduced the global occurrence of the disease from three hundred thousand cases in 1988 to two hundred cases in 2012(procon.org). Other people say it is cruel and inhumane for animals to be treated that way. They feel this way because animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process.
They say …show more content…
They believe when testing medicines for potential toxicity, the lives of human volunteers should not be put in danger unnecessarily. It would be unethical to perform invasive experimental procedures on human beings before the methods have been tested on animals, and some experiments involve genetic manipulation that would be unacceptable to impose on human subjects before animal testing. Others disagree and think drugs that pass animal tests are still not necessarily safe for humans. The 1950s sleeping pill thalidomide, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities, was tested on animals prior to its commercial release and animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx 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 before being pulled from the
They say animal testing has contributed to many life saving cures and treatments. Experiments in which dogs had their pancreases removed led directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics. The polio vaccine, tested on animals, reduced the global occurrence of the disease from three hundred thousand cases in 1988 to two hundred cases in 2012(procon.org). Other people say it is cruel and inhumane for animals to be treated that way. They feel this way because animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process.
They say …show more content…
They believe when testing medicines for potential toxicity, the lives of human volunteers should not be put in danger unnecessarily. It would be unethical to perform invasive experimental procedures on human beings before the methods have been tested on animals, and some experiments involve genetic manipulation that would be unacceptable to impose on human subjects before animal testing. Others disagree and think drugs that pass animal tests are still not necessarily safe for humans. The 1950s sleeping pill thalidomide, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities, was tested on animals prior to its commercial release and animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx 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 before being pulled from the