Talk:Animal testing/arguments

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Contents 1 Ethics and usefulness 1.1 Ethics 1.2 Usefulness 2 Notes

[edit] Ethics and usefulness

The ethics and usefulness of performing experiments on animals is subject to debate, scientific study, political activism, and laws designed to maximize desireable results and minimize undesirable results. There is some disagreement about which animal testing procedures are useful for what purposes as well as disagreement about which ethical principles should apply. The extreme ends of the ethical debate meet at the same place (experiment on humans instead) for the opposite ethical reasons of holding ethics to be of no concern (thus treating humans as mere animals) and holding ethics to be of such overriding concern that even practical results that saves billions of lives can not be allowed to override causing the smallest pain to the least animal. The vast middle ground involves weighing positive and negative aspects; then designing protocols and laws that benefit both human and nonhuman animals by improving health care for both by creating ever increasingly accurate information.

[edit] Ethics

• It would be unethical to test substances or drugs with potentially adverse side-effects on human beings. [1]
• Animals receive more sophisticated medical care because of animal tests that have led to advances in veterinary medicine. [2]
• Over 10 times more animals are used by humans for other purposes (agriculture, hunting, pest control) than are used in animal testing. 100 million animals are killed by hunting each year. [3] 150 million large mammals are used in agriculture each year. [4] Hundreds of millions of rats are involved in pest control. [5] [6] Over seven million dogs and cats are euthanized by animal shelters each year, and a million animals are killed each day by automobiles. [7]
• The suffering of the animals is excessive in relation to whatever benefits may be reaped.^[1] Some opponents, particularly supporters of animal rights, argue further that any benefits to human beings cannot outweigh the suffering of the animals, and that human beings have no moral right to use an individual animal in ways that do not benefit that individual.
• In practice, there is widespread abuse of animals.^[2]
• Animals do not consent to being tested upon.

[edit] Usefulness

• Many animal models of disease are induced and cannot be compared to the human disease. For example, although genetic [8] and toxin-mediated animal models are now widely used to model Parkinson's disease, the British anti-vivisection interest group BUAV argues that these models only superficially resemble the disease symptoms, without the same time course or cellular pathology. ^[3]
• Some drugs have dangerous side-effects that were not predicted by animal models. Thalidomide is often used as an example of this, although harmful effects of this drug are also seen in animals.^[4][5]
• Some drugs appear to have different effects on human and other species.^[6] Also certain human foods are poisonous to animals due to their body chemistry. Chocolate, onions, grapes, raisins, and Macadamia nuts are poisonous to dogs, while aspirin is poisonous to cats. If an animal dies from a new food product being tested, it doesn't mean that it is poisonous to humans.
• The conditions in which the tests are carried out may undermine the results, because of the stress the environment produces in the animals. BUAV argue that the laboratory environment and the experiments themselves are capable of affecting every organ and biochemical function in the body. "Noise, restraint, isolation, pain, psychological distress, overcrowding, regrouping, separation from mothers, sleeplessness, hypersexuality, surgery and anaesthesia can all increase mortality, contact sensitivity, tumour susceptibility and metastatic spread, as well as decrease viral resistance and immune response." [9]
• The most vocal proponents of animal testing have vested interests in maintaining the practice. [10]
• Drugs and vaccines produced through animal testing are vital to modern medicine. [11]
• There have been several examples of substances causing death or injury to human beings because of inadequate animal testing. [12]
• Controlled experiments involve introducing only one variable at a time, which is why animals used for experiments are housed in laboratory settings. In contrast, human environments and genetic backgrounds vary widely, which makes it difficult to control important variables for human subjects. [13]
• Animals can be bred especially for animal-testing purposes, meaning they arrive at the laboratory free from disease^[7].
• There is no substitute for the living systems necessary to study interaction among cells, tissue, and organs. Animals are good surrogates because of their similarities to humans. [14]
• There is no substitute for psychiatric studies (e.g., antidepressant clinical trials) that require behavioral data. ^{[citation needed]}
• There is no substitute for studies of the infection of a host. For example, infection with hepatitis, malaria or treatment with monoclonal antibodies all have unique advantages in chimpanzees.^[8]
• Some animals (e.g. Drosophila) have shorter life and reproductive spans than humans, meaning that several generations can be studied in a relatively shorter time.
• There have been several examples of substances causing death or injury to human beings because of inadequate animal testing. [15]
• Alternatives to certain kinds of animal testing are unknown.^[9]
• Activists manipulate and fabricate facts, therefore their claims are not reliable.^[10][11]

[edit] Notes