Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

Intro:
Animals are used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medications, check the
safety of products destined for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and health care uses.
Research on living animals has been practiced since at least 500 BC.
Descriptions of the dissection of live animals have been found in ancient Greek writings from as early
as circa 500 BC. Physician-scientists such as Aristotle, Herophilus, and Erasistratus performed the
experiments to discover the functions of living organisms. Vivisection (dissection of a living
organism) was practiced on human criminals in ancient Rome and Alexandria, but prohibitions against
mutilation of the human body in ancient Greece led to a reliance on animal subjects. Aristotle believed
that animals lacked intelligence, and so the notions of justice and injustice did not apply to them.
Theophrastus, a successor to Aristotle, disagreed, objecting to the vivisection of animals on the
grounds that, like humans, they can feel pain, and causing pain to animals was an affront to the gods.

Affirmative:
Animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments for humans and animals alike.
Nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using
animals, according to the California Biomedical Research Association. To name just a few examples,
animal research has contributed to major advances in treating conditions including breast cancer, brain
injury, childhood leukemia, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, and tuberculosis. Testing on animals was
also instrumental in the development of pacemakers, cardiac valve substitutes, and anesthetics.
Scientists racing to develop a vaccine for coronavirus during the 2020 global pandemic needed to test
on genetically modified mice to ensure that the vaccine did not make the virus worse. Nikolai
Petrovsky, professor in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Australia,
said testing a coronavirus vaccine on animals is “absolutely essential” and skipping that step would be
“fraught with difficulty and danger.”
Researchers have to test extensively to prevent “vaccine enhancement,” a situation in which a vaccine
actually makes the disease worse in some people. “The way you reduce that risk is first you show it
does not occur in laboratory animals,” explains Peter Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical
Medicine at Baylor College.
Further, animals themselves benefit from the results of animal testing. Vaccines tested on animals have
saved millions of animals that would otherwise have died from rabies, distemper, feline leukemia,
infectious hepatitis virus, tetanus, anthrax, and canine parvo virus. Treatments for animals developed
using animal testing also include pacemakers for heart disease and remedies for glaucoma and hip
dysplasia.
Animal testing has also been instrumental in saving endangered species from extinction, including the
black-footed ferret, the California condor and the tamarins of Brazil. The American Veterinary
Medical Association (AVMA) endorses animal testing to develop safe drugs, vaccines, and medical
devices.
Pro 2
Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human beings in many ways.
Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and mice are 98% genetically similar to humans.
All mammals, including humans, are descended from common ancestors, and all have the same set of
organs (heart, kidneys, lungs, etc.) that function in essentially the same way with the help of a
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

bloodstream and central nervous system. Because animals and humans are so biologically similar, they
are susceptible to many of the same conditions and illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and
diabetes.
Animals often make better research subjects than humans because of their shorter life cycles.
Laboratory mice, for example, live for only two to three years, so researchers can study the effects of
treatments or genetic manipulation over a whole lifespan, or across several generations, which would
be infeasible using human subjects. Mice and rats are particularly well-suited to long-term cancer
research, partly because of their short lifespans.
Further, animals must be used in cases when ethical considerations prevent the use of human subjects.
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. The
World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki states that human trials should be preceded by
tests on animals.
A poll of 3,748 scientists by the Pew Research Center found that 89% favored the use of animals in
scientific research. The American Cancer Society, American Physiological Society, National
Association for Biomedical Research, American Heart Association, and the Society of Toxicology all
advocate the use of animals in scientific research.
Pro 3
Animal research is highly regulated, with laws in place to protect animals from mistreatment.
In addition to local and state laws and guidelines, animal research has been regulated by the federal
Animal Welfare Act (AWA) since 1966. As well as stipulating minimum housing standards for
research animals (enclosure size, temperature, access to clean food and water, and others), the AWA
also requires regular inspections by veterinarians.
All proposals to use animals for research must be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee (IACUC) set up by each research facility. Most major research institutions’ programs are
voluntarily reviewed for humane practices by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of
Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC).
Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animals’ sake and to ensure reliable test
results. Research animals are cared for by veterinarians, husbandry specialists, and animal health
technicians to ensure their well-being and more accurate findings. Rachel Rubino, attending
veterinarian and director of the animal facility at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, says, “Most people
who work with research animals love those animals…. We want to give them the best lives possible,
treat them humanely.” At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s animal research facility, dogs are given
exercise breaks twice daily to socialize with their caretakers and other dogs, and a “toy rotation
program” provides opportunities for play.
It has resulted in a number of medical improvements for people:
According to the argument, live testing will never completely replace computer simulations or models.
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

Safety concerns are less

Animal testing helps to reduce the possibility of an unintended occurrence occurring when humans use
or consume the products that are a part of the animal testing trial. This increases the safety of the
products that are being released.
Some animals are virtually exact replicas of us:
The fact that mice's genetic profile is 98% identical to that of humans explains why they are regularly
utilized in animal research. Because their genetic makeup is 99% identical to that of a person,
chimpanzees have historically been used extensively and are still used today in various parts of the
world.
Statistics and fun facts:

 89% of scientists surveyed by the Pew Research Center were in favor of animal testing for
scientific research.
 Researchers Joseph and Charles Vacanti grew a human "ear" seeded from implanted cow
cartilage cells on the back of a living mouse to explore the possibility of fabricating body parts
for plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Pros or Postives of Animal Testing

1. Helps researchers to find drugs and treatments:
The major pro for animal testing is that it aids researchers in finding drugs and treatments to improve
health and medicine. Many medical treatments have been made possible by animal testing, including
cancer and HIV drugs, insulin, antibiotics, vaccines and many more.

2. Improves human health:

It is for this reason that animal testing is considered vital for improving human health and it is also
why the scientific community and many members of the public support its use. In fact, there are also
individuals who are against animal testing for cosmetics but still support animal testing for medicine
and the development of new drugs for disease.

3. Helps ensure safety of drugs:

Another important aspect to note is that animal testing helps to ensure the safety of drugs and many
other substances humans use or are exposed to regularly. Drugs in particular can carry significant
dangers with their use but animal testing allows researchers to initially gauge the safety of drugs prior
to commencing trials on humans. This means that human harm is reduced and human lives are saved –
not simply from avoidance of the dangers of drugs but because the drugs themselves save lives as well
as improve the quality of human life.

4. Alternative methods of testing do not simulate humans in the same way

Scientists typically use animals for testing purposes because they are considered similar to humans. As
such, researchers do recognise the limitations and differences but the testing is done on animals
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

because they are thought to be the closest match and best one with regards to applying this data to
humans.
Negative:
Con 1
Animal testing is cruel and inhumane.
Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, food and water deprivation,
the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its
effects and remedies, and “killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or
other means,” according to Humane Society International. The US Department of Agriculture reported
in Jan. 2020 that research facilities used over 300,000 animals in activities involving pain in just one
year.
Plus, most experiments involving animals are flawed, wasting the lives of the animal subjects. A peer-
reviewed study found serious flaws in the majority of publicly funded US and UK animal studies
using rodents and primates: “only 59% of the studies stated the hypothesis or objective of the study
and the number and characteristics of the animals used.” A 2017 study found further flaws in animal
studies, including “incorrect data interpretation, unforeseen technical issues, incorrectly constituted (or
absent) control groups, selective data reporting, inadequate or varying software systems, and blatant
fraud.”
Only 5% of animals used in experiments are protected by US law. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA)
does not apply to rats, mice, fish, and birds, which account for 95% of the animals used in research.
The types of animals covered by the AWA account for fewer than one million animals used in research
facilities each year, which leaves around 25 million other animals without protection from
mistreatment. The US Department of Agriculture, which inspects facilities for AWA compliance,
compiles annual statistics on animal testing but they only include data on the small percentage of
animals subject to the Act.
Even the animals protected by the AWA are mistreated. Violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the
federally funded New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana included maltreatment of primates
who were suffering such severe psychological stress that they engaged in self-mutilation, infant
primates awake and alert during painful experiments, and chimpanzees being intimidated and shot
with a dart gun.
Con 2
Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings.
94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials. Over 100 stroke drugs and over 85
HIV vaccines failed in humans after succeeding in animal trials. Nearly 150 clinical trials (human
tests) of treatments to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients have been undertaken, and all of
them failed, despite being successful in animal tests.
Drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe. 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. Later tests on pregnant mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats, and hamsters did not result in birth defects
unless the drug was administered at extremely high doses. 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 market.
Plus, animal tests may mislead researchers into ignoring potential cures and treatments. Some
chemicals that are ineffective on (or harmful to) animals prove valuable when used by humans.
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

Aspirin, for example, is dangerous for some animal species. Intravenous vitamin C has shown to be
effective in treating sepsis in humans, but makes no difference to mice. Fk-506 (tacrolimus), used to
lower the risk of organ transplant rejection, was “almost shelved” because of animal test results,
according to neurologist Aysha Akhtar. A report on Slate.com stated that a “source of human suffering
may be the dozens of promising drugs that get shelved when they cause problems in animals that may
not be relevant for humans
Con 3
Alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals.
Other research methods such as in vitro testing (tests done on human cells or tissue in a petri dish)
offer opportunities to reduce or replace animal testing. Technological advancements in 3D printing
allow the possibility for tissue bioprinting: a French company is working to bioprint a liver that can
test the toxicity of a drug. Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm
and ThinCert, can be made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and
may produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin.
Michael Bachelor, Senior Scientist and Product Manager at biotech company MatTek, stated, “We can
now create a model from human skin cells — keratinocytes — and produce normal skin or even a
model that mimics a skin disease like psoriasis. Or we can use human pigment-producing cells —
melanocytes — to create a pigmented skin model that is similar to human skin from different
ethnicities. You can’t do that on a mouse or a rabbit.” The Environmental Protection Agency is so
confident in alternatives that the agency intends to reduce chemical testing on mammals 30% by 2025
and end it altogether by 2035.
Scientists are also able to test vaccines on humans volunteers. Unlike animals used for research,
humans are able to give consent to be used in testing and are a viable option when the need arises. The
COVID-19 (coronavirus) global pandemic demonstrated that researchers can skip animal testing and
go straight to observing how vaccines work in humans. One company working on a COVID-19
vaccine, Moderna Therapeutics, worked on developing a vaccine using new technology: instead of
being based on a weakened form of the virus, it was developed using a synthetic copy of the COVID-
19 genetic code.

A large number of the tested items are never used:

New products may benefit from animal testing in terms of safety, but some of the things studied will
never be used. As a result, it is probable that animals will give their lives to test the safety of a product
that humans would never even be aware was being manufactured.

It could be a costly procedure:

An enormous amount of money is needed to care for an animal. The technique incurs additional costs
because some of the test animals are purchased at auction or captured from the wild.

Bad research techniques invalidate the results:

The translation of animal research to human study is not simply hampered by data differences. when
improper research techniques are used, the data that is obtained could be invalidated.
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

Animal experiments are cruel, unreliable, and even dangerous

The harmful use of animals in experiments is not only cruel but also often ineffective. Animals do not
naturally get many of the diseases that humans do, such as major types of heart disease, many types of
cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s disease or schizophrenia. Instead, signs of these diseases are artificially
induced in animals in laboratories in an attempt to mimic the human disease. Yet, such experiments
belittle the complexity of human conditions which are affected by wide-ranging variables such as
genetics, socio-economic factors, deeply-rooted psychological issues and different personal
experiences.
It is not surprising to find that treatments showing “promise” in animals rarely work in humans. Not
only are time, money and animals’ lives being wasted (with a huge amount of suffering), but effective
treatments are being mistakenly discarded and harmful treatments are getting through. The support for
animal testing is based largely on anecdote and is not backed up, we believe, by the scientific evidence
that is out there.
Despite many decades of studying cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, stroke
and AIDS in animals, none of these conditions have reliable and fully effective cures and some don’t
even have effective treatments.

1.Animals are killed or kept in captivity:

In animal testing, countless animals are experimented on and then killed after their use. Others are
injured and will still live the remainder of their lives in captivity.
2. Some substances tested, may never be used for anything useful:
The unfortunate aspect is that many of these animals received tests for substances that will never
actually see approval or public consumption and use. It is this aspect of animal testing that many view
as a major negative against the practice, as it seems that the animal died in vain because no direct
benefit to humans occurred.
3. It is very expensive:
Another con on the issue of animal testing is the price. Animal testing generally costs an enormous
amount of money, as the animals must be fed, housed, cared for and treated with drugs or a similar
experimental substance. On top of that, animal testing may occur more than once and over the course
of months, which means that additional costs are incurred. The price of animals themselves must also
be factored into the equation. There are companies who breed animals specifically for testing and
animals can be purchased through them.
4. Animals and humans are never exactly the same:
There is also the argument that the reaction of a drug in an animal's body is quite different from the
reaction in a human. The main criticism here is that some believe animal testing is unreliable.
Following on that criticism is the premise that because animals are in an unnatural environment, they
will be under stress. Therefore, they won't react to the drugs in the same way compared to their
potential reaction in a natural environment. This argument further weakens the validity of animal
experimentation.
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENT
Millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside barren cages in
laboratories across the country to be used in experiments. They languish in pain, suffer from extreme
frustration, ache with loneliness, and long to be free. Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear for
the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed on them. The lack of environmental
enrichment and the stress of their living situation cause some animals to develop neurotic types of
behavior, such as incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back and forth, pulling out their own fur, and
even biting themselves. After enduring pain, loneliness, and terror, almost all of them are killed.
There are many non-animal research methods that can be used in place of animal testing. Not only are
these non-animal tests more humane, they’re also more relevant to humans and have the potential to
be cheaper and faster.
Each of us can help prevent animal suffering and take a stand against vivisection by buying cruelty-
free products, requesting alternatives to animal dissection at school, donating only to charities that
don’t experiment on animals, and demanding the immediate implementation of humane, effective non-
animal tests by government agencies and corporations.
What is animal testing?
The term “animal testing” refers to procedures performed on living animals for purposes of research
into basic biology and diseases, assessing the effectiveness of new medicinal products, and testing the
human health and/or environmental safety of consumer and industry products such as cosmetics,
household cleaners, food additives, pharmaceuticals and industrial/agro-chemicals. All procedures,
even those classified as “mild,” have the potential to cause the animals physical as well as
psychological distress and suffering. Often the procedures can cause a great deal of suffering. Most
animals are killed at the end of an experiment, but some may be re-used in subsequent experiments.
Here is a selection of common animal procedures:

 Forced chemical exposure in toxicity testing, which can include oral force-feeding, forced
inhalation, skin or injection into the abdomen, muscle, etc.
 Exposure to drugs, chemicals or infectious disease at levels that cause illness, pain and
distress, or death
 Genetic manipulation, e.g., addition or “knocking out” of one or more genes
 Ear-notching and tail-clipping for identification
 Short periods of physical restraint for observation or examination
 Prolonged periods of physical restraint
 Food and water deprivation
 Surgical procedures followed by recovery
 Infliction of wounds, burns and other injuries to study healing
 Infliction of pain to study its physiology and treatment
 Behavioural experiments designed to cause distress, e.g., electric shock or forced swimming
 Other manipulations to create “animal models” of human diseases ranging from cancer to
stroke to depression
 Killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means
What types of animals are used?
Many different species are used around the world, but the most common include mice, fish, rats,
rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, farm animals, birds, cats, dogs, mini-pigs, and non-human primates
(monkeys, and in some countries, chimpanzees). Video: Watch what scientists have to say about
alternatives to animal testing.
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

It is estimated that more than 115 million animals worldwide are used in laboratory experiments every
year. But because only a small proportion of countries collect and publish data concerning animal use
for testing and research, the precise number is unknown. For example, in the United States, up to 90
percent of the animals used in laboratories (purpose-bred rats, mice and birds, fish, amphibians,
reptiles and invertebrates) are excluded from the official statistics, meaning that figures published by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture are no doubt a substantial underestimate.
Within the European Union, more than 12 million animals are used each year, with France, Germany
and the United Kingdom being the top three animal using countries. British statistics reflect the use of
more than 3 million animals each year, but this number does not include animals bred for research but
killed as “surplus” without being used for specific experimental procedures. Although these animals
still endure the stresses and deprivation of life in the sterile laboratory environment, their lives are not
recorded in official statistics. HSI believes that complete transparency about animal use is vital and
that all animals bred, used or killed for the research industry should be included in official figures. See
some animal use statistics.
What’s wrong with animal testing?
For nearly a century, drug and chemical safety assessments have been based on laboratory testing
involving rodents, rabbits, dogs, and other animals. Aside from the ethical issues they pose—inflicting
both physical pain as well as psychological distress and suffering on large numbers of sentient
creatures—animal tests are time- and resource-intensive, restrictive in the number of substances that
can be tested, provide little understanding of how chemicals behave in the body, and in many cases do
not correctly predict real-world human reactions. Similarly, health scientists are increasingly
questioning the relevance of research aimed at “modelling” human diseases in the laboratory by
artificially creating symptoms in other animal species.
Trying to mirror human diseases or toxicity by artificially creating symptoms in mice, dogs or
monkeys has major scientific limitations that cannot be overcome. Very often the symptoms and
responses to potential treatments seen in other species are dissimilar to those of human patients. As a
consequence, nine out of every 10 candidate medicines that appear safe and effective in animal studies
fail when given to humans. Drug failures and research that never delivers because of irrelevant animal
models not only delay medical progress, but also waste resources and risk the health and safety of
volunteers in clinical trials.
What’s the alternative?
If lack of human relevance is the fatal flaw of “animal models,” then a switch to human-relevant
research tools is the logical solution. The National Research Council in the United States has
expressed its vision of “a not-so-distant future in which virtually all routine toxicity testing would be
conducted in human cells or cell lines”, and science leaders around the world have echoed this view.
The sequencing of the human genome and birth of functional genomics, the explosive growth of
computer power and computational biology, and high-speed robot automation of cell-based (in vitro)
screening systems, to name a few, has sparked a quiet revolution in biology. Together, these
innovations have produced new tools and ways of thinking that can help uncover exactly how
chemicals and drugs disrupt normal processes in the human body at the level of cells and molecules.
From there, scientists can use computers to interpret and integrate this information with data from
human and population-level studies. The resulting predictions regarding human safety and risk are
potentially more relevant to people in the real world than animal tests.
But that’s just the beginning. The wider field of human health research could benefit from a similar
shift in paradigm. Many disease areas have seen little or no progress despite decades of animal
research. Some 300 million people currently suffer from asthma, yet only two types of treatment have
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

become available in the last 50 years. More than a thousand potential drugs for stroke have been tested
in animals, but only one of these has proved effective in patients. And it’s the same story with many
other major human illnesses. A large-scale re-investment in human-based (not mouse or dog or
monkey) research aimed at understanding how disruptions of normal human biological functions at the
levels of genes, proteins and cell and tissue interactions lead to illness in our species could advance the
effective treatment or prevention of many key health-related societal challenges of our time.
Modern non-animal techniques are already reducing and superseding experiments on animals, and in
European Union, the “3Rs” principle of replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments
is a legal requirement. In most other parts of the world there is currently no such legal imperative,
leaving scientists free to use animals even where non-animal approaches are available.
If animal testing is so unreliable, why does it continue?
Despite this growing evidence that it is time for a change, effecting that change within a scientific
community that has relied for decades on animal models as the “default method” for testing and
research takes time and perseverance. Old habits die hard, and globally there is still a lack of
knowledge of and expertise in cutting-edge non-animal techniques.
But with HSI’s help, change is happening. We are leading efforts globally to encourage scientists ,
companies and policy-makers to transition away from animal use in favour of 21st century methods.
Our work brings together experts from around the globe to share knowledge and best practice,
improving the quality of research by replacing animals in the laboratory.
Are animal experiments needed for medical progress?
It is often argued that because animal experiments have been used for centuries, and medical progress
has been made in that time, animal experiments must be necessary. But this is missing the point.
History is full of examples of flawed or basic practices and ideas that were once considered state-of-
the-art, only to be superseded years later by something far more sophisticated and successful. In the
early 1900’s, the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane was truly innovative for its time, but more
than a century later, technology has advanced so much that when compared to the modern jumbo jet
those early flying machines seem quaint and even absurd. Those early ideas are part of aviation
history, but no-one would seriously argue that they represent the cutting-edge of design or human
achievement. So it is with laboratory research. Animal experiments are part of medical history, but
history is where they belong. Compared to today’s potential to understand the basis of human disease
at cellular and molecular levels, experimenting on live animals seems positively primitive. So if we
want better quality medical research, safer more effective pharmaceuticals and cures to human
diseases, we need to turn the page in the history books and embrace the new chapter—21st century
science.
Independent scientific reviews demonstrate that research using animals correlates very poorly to real
human patients. In fact, the data show that animal studies fail to predict real human outcomes in 50 to
99.7 percent of cases. This is mainly because other species seldom naturally suffer from the same
diseases as found in humans. Animal experiments rely on often uniquely human conditions being
artificially induced in non-human species. While on a superficial level they may share similar
symptoms, fundamental differences in genetics, physiology and biochemistry can result in wildly
different reactions to both the illness and potential treatments. For some areas of disease research,
overreliance on animal models may well have delayed medical progress rather than advanced it. By
contrast, many non-animal replacement methods such as cell-based studies, silicon chip biosensors,
and computational systems biology models, can provide faster and more human-relevant answers to
medical and chemical safety questions that animal experiments cannot match. “The claim that
animal experimentation is essential to medical development is not supported by proper, scientific
Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

evidence but by opinion and anecdote. Systematic reviews of its effectiveness don’t support the claims
made on its behalf” (Pandora Pound et al. British Medical Journal 328, 514-7, 2004).