Cruel Effects Of Animal Testing

Words: 1764
Pages: 8

The Cruel Effects of Animal Testing for Human Benefit and Why It Should Be Limited The term animal testing is used to describe the use of animals in experiments involving training, research, and education. Each year, 50-100 million animals are used in animal testing. Some experiments are regulated, like those on vertebrates. Invertebrates are not so lucky (Badyal, 2014, paras. 3 & 4). Many cases have been presented providing evidence to the cruel conditions imposed on these unwilling animals. However, scientists still remain confident in animal testing as a necessary evil for the development of drugs. By limiting the amount and extent of testing that is allowed, and finding a way to compromise, drug testing can become much safer and …show more content…
“The greatest drug discoveries in the 19 th and 20 th centuries were possible due to the use of animals” (Badyal, 2014, para. 6). Animals are most commonly used for educational purposes (Badyal, 2014, paras. 6 & 7). Even in high school, animals are used in labs for dissections in order to create a better understanding of the anatomy of living things. Drug testing is another major leader of animal use. Animals are used for not only medical drugs, but cosmetics as well. There has been extensive negative publicity on cosmetic testing, as it has caused toxicity in many forms, including eye and skin irritancy (Badyal, 2014, paras. 9-11). One of the most redundant uses of animals is toxicology testing. Not only does the act result in mainly death, it also does not even accurately portray the harm that will be inflicted on humans. In most cases, things that are toxic to the human may not even be toxic to the animal, or vice versa (Badyal, 2014, para. 12). When brought to the public eye, many concerns have been voiced regarding the practice of experimenting with animals. The main concern is physical and mental stress and pain. While even momentary pain and distress to a human within an experiment is noted as a “painful procedure,” animals are expected to endure pain to the point of death (Badyal, 2014, para. …show more content…
The effects of diseases such as stroke that take place in a human, do not naturally occur in an animal. Due to this, doctors tinker with the anatomy of an animal to emulate the conditions a human would have. Because of this unnatural process of events, many drugs fail. Over one hundred potential drugs and therapies have failed in humans that worked in animals (Akhtar, 2015, paras. 8-10). By trying out new drugs discovered through animal testing, old ones are sometimes abandoned which is a waste of time and resources. The opportunity costs outweigh the benefits. The time and money spent simulating human characteristics in animals and testing out drugs that are not guaranteed to work would be much more efficiently used with experiments implementing human organs (Akhtar, 2015, paras. 27-29). The use of animals in tests is far more expensive than alternate methods (Louwe, 2017, para.