: So who determines necessity? Is it necessary to test a possible new product before putting it out on the market to cure an illness? Absolutely. Do we begin by testing humans first? I don't think so. Not if the medicine will be used on me. I'll sacrifice my dog or cat -- NOT my wife or children -- first. Testing on the animal first is a necessity. Testing on my family first is not. As far as I'm concerned, the only time harming an animal would be necessary would be if that animal was attacking me or someone else. If you ask me, would you harm an animal if, for example, you were in a lifeboat and starving, and all there was was you and other people and a dog, I can only say that a) that's a highly unlikely situation to find oneself in, but b) who knows? Under those circumstances, it's hard to say how one will react, but we all know that people will do the most horrible things under horrible circumstances.
Now, there are two kinds of testing: product testing, and medical testing. Regarding product testing, how can one defend painful tests on animals (and they are painful) for the sake of making one's sheets white or cheeks rosier? That's obscene. Besides, it doesn't make you any safer. Oven cleaner is tested by pouring it in animals' eyes and down their throats, but would you therefore feel safe doing it to yourself? There are no federal laws mandating product safety testing on animals; this is done to produce warning labels that prevent lawsuits -- labels that can be placed on products without any need to make animals suffer.
Then there's medical testing, which is a thornier issue. From a moral point of view, I can't support purposefully hurting healthy animals: it makes them suffer, and degrades us. An analogy to consider would be if extremely intelligent aliens came to Earth and decided to test on us. In your opinion, would they be justified in experimenting on you or your wife or your neighbor simply because they were more intelligent than us? A more down to Earth example is, would it be okay to experiment upon a chimpanzee, but not upon a severely retarded human being who was less intelligent and aware than the chimp? If not, why not? If yes, why? How about murderous criminals, and not innocent animals? In all cases, I think it is wrong.
There are also scientific arguments against experimentation. I've taken the liberty of lifting them from an anti-vivisection website FAQ, as in matters scientific, they are more eloquent than I. Before I paste them, I'd like to tell you what a leading anti-vivisectionist scientist and friend on mine once said: in the days when he was experimenting on animals, something felt wrong, and that feeling grew worse, until he decided he could no longer do it, and so, he said, "I called in well and quit."
One other thing, Gotch. I don't deny that some benefits have and can come from animal experimentation. But I believe it is fundamentally wrong to attempt to achieve good ends through evil means, and I believe purposefully making animals suffer is evil. This means that we, people, may not achieve those benefits as fast as we otherwise would, but sometimes sacrifices are necessary in upholding one's principles. Were that not so, think of all the things people would do to one another for immediate gain, such as lying. Or worse.
Q: "It isn’t feasible to stop using animals for basic medical research because of the need to observe the complex interactions of cells, tissues, and organs."
A: Besides the moral issues involved, clinical and epidemiological studies of humans offer a far more accurate picture without hurting anyone. Observing interactions in animals is no guarantee that the
information can be extrapolated to humans. Different species of animals vary enormously in their reactions to toxins and diseases and in their metabolism of drugs. For example, a dose of aspirin that is therapeutic in humans is poisonous to cats and has no effect on fever in horses; benzene causes leukemia in humans but not in mice; insulin produces birth defects in animals but not in humans, and so on. Animal experiments cannot replace careful clinical observation of humans.
Q: "Hasn’t every major medical advance been attributable to experiments on animals?"
A: Medical historians have shown that improved nutrition, sanitation, and other behavioral and environmental factors—not anything learned from animal experiments—are responsible for the decline in deaths since 1900 from the most common infectious diseases and that medicine has had
little to do with increased life expectancy. Many of the most important advances in health are attributable to human studies, among them anesthesia; bacteriology; germ theory; the stethoscope; morphine; radium; penicillin; artificial respiration; antiseptics; the CAT, MRI, and PET scans; the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and between smoking and cancer; the development of x-rays; and the isolation of the virus that causes AIDS. Animal testing
played no role in these and many other developments.
Q: "But many treatments we have today were developed on animals—like polio vaccines, for instance."
A: In fact, two separate bodies of work were done on polio—the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and which did not involve animals, and the subsequent animal tests, in which close to 1 million animals were killed and which the Nobel committee refused to recognize as anything more than wasteful. Also, polio died out just as quickly in areas of the world that did not use the vaccine as in the United States.
However, certainly, some medical developments were discovered through cruel animal tests. But just because animals were used doesn't mean they had to be used or that primitive techniques that were used in the 1800s are valid today. It's impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals, because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading
results with regard to human health, we'd probably be better off if we hadn't relied on them.
