Animal Testing There Has Been

Animal Testing

There has been heated debates over the years on the use of animals for experimental purposes, scientist have their argument to support their use while, at the same time, animal lobby groups have their argument against the use of animal for experimental purposes. In Britain alone, more than 3 million animals have been experimented on in their laboratories, this does not include those which their body parts are harvested for experiment purposes and those that did not meet the required standards for experimental purposes. With such increase in animal use, the question which arises is, is it ethically right to use animals for experimental purposes, yet they have life just like humans Simon Festing, 2007 ()

Scholars have described the use of live animals in scientific as vivisection. Scientist have tried to defend their actions saying that the use of animal is the safest way to test new products necessary for medical development but is it still ethical to breed a life just to get rid of it after the experiment? In addition, animals such as rats and mice are mostly being used because they are easy to inbreed, are small, and more so cheap, but, in some other special experiments, animals such as rabbits, pigs, chickens, fish, dogs and guinea pigs are also used EMP, 2004()

Scientist normally subject these animals to torture, pain, distress and lasting harm just to achieve the desired results which should reciprocate what human would have gone through instead. Animal lobby groups have noted that animals usually suffer a lot in the hands of scientist, they add that, even those animals, not in the testing schedule end up detained for a long period that they end up developing stress to the point of even death due to the solitary confinement they are often kept in EMP, 2004()

Scientist want the rest of the public to believe that animals such as the rats and mice can be disposed of like objects forgetting that these creatures also have a life, they have maternal instincts, experience fear and pain just like other animals. These animals are normally subjected to pain and toxic experiments which are normally killing them on the spot Simon Festing, 2007 .

Though, the use of these animals is good for medicals experiments such as in determining the causes of a certain health problem and to find out the treatment of certain diseases. It is still unethical to use them, because of the following reasons.

Just like it is ethical to seek consent to a human being why do scientist use them against their wish, since the same way they cannot ask for consent is the same way they do not belong in those experiments with humans. Secondly, human beings should respect life, whether it is of a small creature or a huge creature, all of them has an equal opportunity to exist among other creatures on earth.

Right from the medical principle of mal-beneficence, scientist should avoid doing harm to these animals. The harm is usually done when they are using this animal to test a drug or a certain chemical formula, for example, when the scientist want to know the drug's toxicity and harmful side effects, they are also subjected to search for cures of certain diseases by undergoing lethal injection, given toxins and cancers among other harmful human diseases. These experiments are done to see how the humans fair on with the treatment or the diseases without putting much consideration to whether it would survive or die FRAME Reduction Committee, 2005()

Some other ways in which animals are unethically used for scientific purposes include in cases where Genetically modification is done on animals where some of their genes are added or removed as per type of experiment done, use to test for product safety such as in agricultural chemicals, food additives, cosmetic and industrial chemicals, where animals subjected to gas chambers, substances forced into their eyes, stomach or skin EMP, 2004()

Even after subjecting these animals to such harsh test, the success rate for predicting the harmful side effect is still lagging at 5-25%, which is way, below as compared to what the animals have to go through EMP, 2004(; Flint C, 2005)

. Therefore, scientist can also pay attention to the use of the three Rs which are: reduction, refinement and replacement. The use of animals can be reduced substantially through improving the techniques they use, data analysis methods and through embracing sharing of information among scientist. They can refine the experiment or the way these animals are handled and lastly, they can replace the use of animals or lethal techniques and replace with the use of computer models, conducting in vitro test, using epidemiology, thorough postmortem investigation, and use of clinical studies and prevention of these diseases before onset MORI, 2005()

Conclusion