Animal Based Experimentation

Along with the rapid progress in science, animals nowadays are vastly used for experimentation and research especially in the biomedical field. The prolonged debate on the issue of whether animal experimentation is justified seems never-ending and has become one of the most controversial issues facing our society. Is animal experimentation ethical? There is never a simple answer for this.

On one hand, Robert Garner, a reader in politics at the University at Leicester claims that animal experimentation is unethical because animals, in fact, have a higher moral status than society has traditionally granted them. He rejects the claim that animal experimentation has been responsible for the past medical breakthroughs, contending that no one knows whether those discoveries could have occurred without the use of animals. [1] On the other hand, Henry E. Heffner, a psychology professor at the University of Toledo asserts that animal experimentation is ethical because it benefits humans, which in turn benefits lab animals that rely on humans for survival. Heffner maintains that the labs serve as safer habitats than natural ones, which allows more successful reproduction of the lab animals. [1]

As opinions diverse on the moral issue of animal experimentation, it is always essential to find out whether this practice is truly necessary in all medical progress. It is found that there are many establishments, pharmaceutical companies, industries and medical research firms that keep insisting on the importance of animal experimentation simply due to financial profits. As animal testing of new drugs is a legal requirement, the lab animal study safeguards them against legal responsibility for the effects of the drugs on humans. In addition, almost every year, drug companies propose new drugs that are identical to those already on the market just because the patent has run out on older drugs. [3,4] Consequently, thousands of animals are sacrificed to fulfill the testing requirements.

Nevertheless, animal experimentation persists mainly because most of the people believe that it has played a crucial role for medical progress. However, several medical historians argue that key discoveries in such areas as heart disease, cancer, immunology, anesthesia and psychiatry were in fact achieved through clinical research, observation of patients and human autopsy.[2] The past has passed and what more important is the present that leads us to the future. So, is animal experimentation still necessary and beneficial to the current medical progress? In fact, there are many important medical advances have been delayed due to misleading data obtained from animal "models". For example, the studies on monkeys as animal models have falsely shown that the polio-causing virus was transmitted via a respiratory, rather than a digestive route. As a result, the inaccurate assumption has misdirected preventive measures and delayed the discovery of a vaccine using tissue culture methodologies. [2,3]

Another example of the inaccuracy of animal-based experimentation is the slow progress of fighting cancer despite the effort and money invested. It is mostly due to the unwarranted preoccupation with animal research. Animals are very much different from humans and thus fail to serve as effective models to seek a cancer cure. Rodents are most commonly used, even though the industry's own Lab Animal magazine admits: "Mice are actually poor models of the majority of human cancers." [2,4] Animal experimentation is also proven to be unnecessary in many psychological studies. Harry Harlow's "maternal deprivation" separates infant monkeys from their mothers at birth so that they are grown up in total isolation or with "surrogate" mothers. Their fear and psychopathology demonstrated the importance of maternal contact. However, this had been shown convincingly in previous human studies without involving any animals. [2]

In conclusion, the value of animal experimentation has been exaggerated due to financial interests. Personally, I strongly feel that animal experimentation, which is based on artificially created pathology, is no longer justified because it weakened by differences between human and non-human anatomy, physiology and pathology. [2] There are a lot more effective methods that does not involve animal such as epidemiology (human population studies), studies on patients, autopsies and biopsies, microfluidic circuits, in vitro cell and tissue cultures, computer modeling, microdosing, etc. [2,4] that can improve the medical progress for the sake of humans.

References:
[1] http://www.bookrags.com/researchtopics/animal-experimentation-ov/sub12.html
[2] http://www.mrmcmed.org/crit2.html
[3] http://www.dawnwatch.com/animal_testing.htm
[4] http://www.cmf.org.uk/literature/content.asp?context=article&id=747