Razo 1

Lorena C. Razo

Mrs. Briones

ENGL 1302-261

February 21, 2024

Animal Testing

Animal testing in the modern day is seen as something taboo, so much so that massive,

heated arguments can be sparked like a match in a cotton factory. Some see nothing wrong with

the use of animals for the study of diseases and medicine as they believe it’ll keep them safe,

while others scorn the thought of using animal testing at all. The use of animals has always been

debated by many groups such as meat eaters against vegans to science against animal lovers.

This isn’t to say people of science don’t care about animals, it’s simply argued that there must be

more humane ways to test all the products humans love to use. There have been benefits found

by animal testing that can be provided for people within the medical field, such as showing us

the physical symptoms that could happen with certain medications. An excellent argument for

this and the benefit of animal testing was by Robert Balster where they argued animal testing is

highly beneficial for drug studies and testing their addictiveness. Balster states, “the results of

abuse potential evaluation studies can be useful in making decisions about the possible need for

regulation. . . “(1549) With this information labs can spot the main issues with their medications

and prevent how much it will be spread with moderation, which Balster also stated as well in the

following “It should also be recognized that it is important to control the availability of only

those drugs with demonstrated abuse potential.”(1550) This fully allows for abusive drug

prevention all thanks to the work of animal testing.

 Razo 2

Is it all worth relying on animal testing completely? Most people argue that it isn’t worth

it at all in the slightest. Not only from a cruelty aspect but, some labs and studies have shown

that the data collected from these animal testing results have come out to be inaccurate, causing

great potential harm to not only people but the animals as well who have been subjected to

useless testing. Stated by Alison Abbott “most animal tests over and underestimate toxicity or

simply don’t mirror toxicity in humans very well.” (145) This alone shows how little these

laboratories take people into consideration within the tests they’re making specifically for

people. “It is dramatically over-predictive: more than 50% of the results are positive, of which

90% are false positives “(145) Abbott explains, which further proves the point of unreliability.

Also on the band wagon is Jarrod Bailey who, just like Abbott, believes that using just purely

animal testing isn’t fully reliable, especially when testing for human usage as it can become

highly dangerous and life-threatening. Bailey stated, “The preclinical testing of pharmaceuticals

in animals could not be justified on scientific grounds, as well as on ethical grounds.” (2) Labs

are simply pumping out tests without the consideration of the differences humans and animals

possess which would raise the risk factor extremely. “Our analysis indicate that, if a drug appears

safe in animals, it could very well still be toxic in humans.” (4) stated Bailey on how the data can

be severely miscalculated; once a person consumes it can cause life-threatening harm because of

the lack of reliability in animals.

“Man’s best friend bears a heavy burden in the pharmaceutical industry.” (551) says

Marian Turner as their research goes over the abuse that man’s best friend faces due to the

endless testing for humankind. They also argue that the data isn’t safe enough to put animals

through if the end results have a high false positive rate. They found that labs only choose dogs

for their testing because in Turner’s statement “The latter tends to be dogs, because they are
 Razo 3

readily available, easy to handle and in many ways physiologically similar to humans.” (551)

This way of thinking and application has proven to be unreliable when paired next to Bailey and

Abbott’s arguments as well, where they show how just due to the animal’s reaction being stable

doesn’t make it any safer for humans who are biologically different in multiple aspects.

Scientists are slowly looking for better and safer ways to do these tests, but don’t want to make

the effort to try to change. When they have always been using animals in science for everything

so far, it would be costly for them to want to put the effort into even trying. If the people in the

lab won’t try to change it comes to the point of who will start the chain reaction of hope to free

the animals from this cruel unnecessary fate.

When the labs and companions make no effort to change even when they have evidence

that their work can be inaccurate, the next course of action is to look towards the community.

The people themselves that share a home with the very same breeds being used which are poked

and prodded at. People claim that they will do anything for their family which includes their

companions, as Bernard Rollin stated “Yet, despite this new status, we continue to inflict

significant harm on these animals, . . .” (1) It shows that even the people who swore the most to

care for them also have fallen victim to the plague of taking no effort into taking their well being

into consideration. This can also be proven with how humans like selective breeding, despite

causing health issues in the name of beauty. Though not all people have shown this level of

negligence towards dogs in animal testing, as stated by Viren Swami, “This is important because

understanding the manner in which attitudes towards animal testing are formed and disseminated

will likely have an impact on wider public policy on animal welfare and animal rights activism.”

(269) Finding out people’s attitudes towards animal testing can help benefit more future

movements to take place leading towards more action being taken. Women are found to be the
 Razo 4

most vocal, along with vegans advocating the strongest to see change. Swami found that “more

recent studies have suggested that attitudes towards animal testing may vary as a function of

education or field of study.” (269) Depending on a person’s background, a wave of different

support stances came to light, as some saw animal testing as a cruel act while others saw nothing

wrong at all.

Laboratories and companies don’t want to make changes due to cost and time, as stated

before, but there have been many new ways to benefit both parties. There would be less testing

on the animals and more cost effective just like the labs and companies would want, but some

scientists within the labs regardless of the cost are already working hand-in-hand with

organizations to help work on alternatives. Stated by Wade Roush, “And in contrast to the

vilification of science by extreme animal-rights groups, a growing number of scientists are

quietly working with moderate animal welfare organizations to slowly reduce the number of

animals used.” (168) This proves that even the people within the lab want to see a change

happen, just like the majority of other people, regardless of their job title. In conclusion, most of

the world is against the use of animal testing, not only due to the harm it can cause to humans

with bad calculations, but to the animals as well, with the countless wasteful tests they are

subjected to. There have been many strides made to end this suffering with some having good

success. But as Redmond Craig stated, “So, there is still work to do on persuading regulators to

accept these non-animal methods in place of animal tests.” (176) Soon there might be progress

made in these areas that will bring peace to both sides.

 Razo 5

Work Cited:

Abbott, Alison. “Animal Testing: More than a Cosmetic Change.” Nature, vol. 438, no. 7065,

Nov. 2005, pp. 144–46. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1038/438144a

Bailey, Jarrod, and Michael Balls. “Recent Efforts to Elucidate the Scientific Validity of Animal-

Based Drug Tests by the Pharmaceutical Industry, pro-Testing Lobby Groups, and Animal

Welfare Organizations.” BMC Medical Ethics, vol. 20, no. 1, 2019, pp. 16–17,

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-019-0352-3.

BALSTER, ROBERT L. “Drug Abuse Potential Evaluation in Animals.” British Journal of

Addiction, vol. 86, no. 12, 1991, pp. 1549–58, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-

0443.1991.tb01747.x.

Roush, Wade. "Hunting for Animal Alternatives." Science, vol. 274, no. 5285, 1996, pp. 168.

ProQuest, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/tamiu.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/

scholarly-journals/hunting-animal-alternatives/docview/213560994/se-2.

Redmond, Craig, and Lush Prize. “Cruelty Free INTERNATIONAL: Ending Animal

Experiments Worldwide.” ALTEX, Alternatives to Animal Experimentation, vol. 38, no. 1, 2021,

pp. 171-.

Rollin, Bernard E. “‘We Always Hurt the Things We Love’—Unnoticed Abuse of Companion

Animals.” Animals (Basel), vol. 8, no. 9, 2018, pp. 157-, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8090157.

 Razo 6

SWAMI, VIREN, et al. “Free the Animals? Investigating Attitudes toward Animal Testing in

Britain and the United States.” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, vol. 49, no. 3, 2008, pp.

269–76, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2008.00636.x.

Turner, Marian. “Call to Curb Lab Tests on Dogs.” Nature, vol. 474, no. 7353, June 2011, p.

551. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1038/474551a.