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Peruvian University of Applied Sciences

Animal experimentation should (not) be prohibited

Maria Fernanda Franco, Fiamma Mesarina, Diana Quispe

English TI 3 (TR38)

Prof. Rocio Eva Oré Vasquez

November,19th, 2022
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Animal experimentation should (not) be prohibited

Mahatma Gandhi stated that the greatness of a nation and its moral advancement

depends on how animals are treated. This statement refers to the dilemma that emerged

over the last years about whether animals should be used for human benefit, since animals

have been used in numerous medical trials and experiments as a way to help millions of

human lives, and the concerns about the way that animals are used for human benefit have

increased. This debate has led to two positions, on one hand some people believe that

animals should be treated the same as humans and their use for experimental purposes is

inhumane and consider that is essential respect animal rights. In contrast, other people

believe that it is more important to use them for medical research, because scientific

experiments with animals have contributed to the advancement of human health and saved

the lives of thousands of people. In this essay, we will discuss both perspectives. Although

there are clear benefits to the use of animals in several aspects of human life, in general, it

has an adverse impact on the environment.

It is widely accepted that animals play a vital role in medical research, as they have

made it possible to discover treatments to prevent or cure various diseases. However,

animals used for experimentation have a life of pain and suffering, which in several cases

results in their death. Kabene and Baadel (2019) revealed in their studies that in America,

over 1.37 million animals were used for drug testing, and in 2010 more than one million

animals are used for assessing each year. For this reason, certain people contemplate that it

is essential to recognize that the use of animals for research purposes constitutes an

infringement of animal rights. In addition, these people claim that animals should be treated
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similarly to humans and have the right to have a life free from suffering because the

benefits to humans do not outweigh the damages done to animals. In the case of the

cosmetic industry, animals are used to evaluate product safety and toxicology. However, it

is worth pointing out that the FDA (The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic) states that it is

not required to use animals for cosmetic testing. For this reason, testing cosmetics on

animals has been completely disproven by people arguing that using animals to develop

human beauty products is cruel and inhumane. In addition, it is important to note that

animals are often killed without any pain relief using techniques like beheading, twisting of

the neck and asphyxiation. Because of that, a number of people claim that experts should

try to develop solutions that help reduce or eliminate the use of animals in cosmetic trials. It

must be emphasized that consternation about animal testing usually extends to the health

and cosmetic industries, as animal testing are often involved in the creation of new drugs,

vaccines, or beauty products. Over the last years, these trials have been fiercely criticized

by protection groups, especially considering that these experiments usually involve

invasive procedures. A vast number of academics suggested using alternatives to animal

experimentation since they view it as an unethical and inefficient practice. These methods

include the use of vegetables, non-invasive clinical studies on human volunteers,

conducting studies with corpses instead, and the use of lower organisms, physicochemical

techniques, computer simulations and test dummies (Rassi & Ribeiro,2017, 91). These

studies would help animals live without pain and, in turn, research has not been

overshadowed by animal suffering.

At the same time, it is important to note that the majority of products used in

humans were initially developed using animals as test subjects. For example, the use of
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animals in biomedical research has contributed to the development of new medicines or

vaccines. Despite the positions taken on this debate, it should be noted that animal

experimentation plays a vital role in the discovery of medicines, vaccines and evaluating

the safety of the products. Moreover, their use started being more recognized in the 20th

century, after the Sulfanilamide disaster, in which a pharmaceutical in the US created a

preparation of sulfanilamide using diethylene glycol (DEG), a lethal component for human

beings, as a solvent. Woolf (2021) explains that, because of lack of testing, and the massive

production and selling of the product, there were around 305 deaths, including thirty-four

children, before discovering the toxicity DEG had. Furthermore, Baadel and Kabene (2019)

state that a considerable number of medical discoveries, in the twenty-first century only

have been possible through animal testing, because of their similarity to the human beings.

At the same time, it is essential to recognize that this genetic similarity has led scientists to

create models of human genetic diseases using mice, rabbits, monkeys, and other animals to

know the different genetic components of diseases like diabetes and certain types of cancer

for which there is still no cure. (Kabene & Baadel, 2019). These genetic models would help

researchers understand the diseases and make it possible to create treatments to combat

each of them. Lastly, La Follette and Shanks (2020) report that most medical advances in

the twentieth century were the result of biomedical research using animals and this

experimentation is justified because of the similarities found between humans and animals.

For instance, in 1939 the use of mice helped the development of penicillin, where a group

of researchers injected eight mice with a virulent strain of Streptococcus, and then four of

them were injected with penicillin while the other four mice were kept as untreated

controls. The next morning, all control mice were dead, and the treated mice were still alive
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(Gaynes, 2017). It is important to note that the FDA, responsible for protecting public

health, requires animal testing for medicines, vaccines, and other biological products.

Therefore, the demand of some people to eradicate the use of animals in research would

eliminate the possibility of finding cures and treatments for various diseases causing the

loss of millions of lives.

In conclusion, this essay discussed both sides of the argument on animal testing. As

we have seen, animals are widely used to satisfy human needs. Some people believe that it

is inhumane and that animal rights should be respected, while others believe it is crucial for

the development of human treatments. Nowadays, the development of technology has

created a significant number of options that could replace animals in these cases, we

believe that a solution to this debate is to find a suitable replacement for animal testing. For

example, In-vitro testing uses “organs-on-chips” that contain human cells and imitates the

function of organs and their systems, which could eliminate the need for the use of animals

for testing because these can replicate human physiology perfectly. Also, some evidence

demonstrates that the results of in vitro testing are more accurate than animal experiments.

However, the reality is that researchers still hold the false belief that animal

experimentation is the "gold standard". Since some of them consider that these alternatives

are unreliable. For this reason, it is essential to keep diffusing information about this topic

and request researchers to conduct a rigorous and accurate search for the alternatives that

have been developed worldwide in recent years.

(Words: 1197)
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References:

  Baade, S. & Kabel, S. (2019) Bioethics: a look at animal testing in medicine and cosmetics in the

UK. Journal of  Medical Ethics and History of Medicine , 12(15) ,2-11

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7166243/pdf/JMEHM-12-15.pdf

Gaynes, R. (2017). The Discovery of Penicillin—New Insights After More Than 75 Years of

Clinical Use. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 23(5), 849-853.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403050/

 LaFollette, H., & Shanks, N. (2020). Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation.

https://books.google.com.pe/books?

id=KmEx_bhnsDQC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=

onepage&q&f=false

Rassi, M. &  Ribeiro, A.(2017) Animal experimentation: A look into ethics, welfare and alternative

methods  Revista da Associação Médica Brasileira 63(11), 923.928

https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9282.63.11.923

Vaughan. M.  (2017) Animal experimentation a guide to the issue https://books.google.es/books?

id=qTUEDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false

Woolf, A. (2021) Chapter 2.1 - Sulfanilamide (diethylene glycol) disaster—United States, 1937.

History of Modern Clinical Toxicology (139-148 pp.) https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-

822218-8.00045-4