People Should Continue Animal Testing How Animal Testing Has Saved Lives for Humans

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To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether animals should be used for scientific or commercial testing, go to ProCon.org.

An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing. 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.

Animal testing in the United States is regulated by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), passed in 1966 and amended in 1970, 1976, and 1985.The AWA defines "animal" as "any live or dead dog, cat, monkey (nonhuman primate mammal), guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm blooded animal." The AWA excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, cold-blooded animals, and farm animals used for food and other purposes.

A public outcry over animal testing and the treatment of animals in general broke out in the United States in the mid-1960s, leading to the passage of the AWA. An article in the November 29, 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated about Pepper, a farmer's pet Dalmation that was kidnapped and sold into experimentation, is believed to have been the initial catalyst for the rise in anti-testing sentiment. Pepper died after researchers attempted to implant an experimental cardiac pacemaker in her body.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) global pandemic brought attention to the debate about animal testing as researchers sought to develop a vaccine for the virus as quickly as possible. Vaccines are traditionally tested on animals to ensure their safety and effectiveness. News broke in Mar. 2020 that there was a shortage of the genetically modified mice that were needed to test coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, other companies tried new development techniques that allowed them to skip animal testing and start with human trials. Moderna Therapeutics used a synthetic copy of the virus genetic code instead of a weakened form of the virus. The FDA approved an application for Moderna to begin clinical trials on a coronavirus vaccine on Mar. 4, 2020, and the first participant was dosed on Mar. 16, 2020.

PRO

• Animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments.
• Animal testing is crucial to ensure that vaccines are safe.
• There is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system.
• Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human beings in many ways.
• Animals must be used in cases when ethical considerations prevent the use of human subjects.
• Animals themselves benefit from the results of animal testing.
• Animal research is highly regulated, with laws in place to protect animals from mistreatment.
• Animals often make better research subjects than human beings because of their shorter life cycles.
• Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animals' sake and to ensure reliable test results.
• Animals do not have rights, therefore it is acceptable to experiment on them.
• The vast majority of biologists and several of the largest biomedical and health organizations in the United States endorse animal testing.
• Some cosmetics and health care products must be tested on animals to ensure their safety.

CON

• Animal testing is cruel and inhumane.
• Scientists are able to test vaccines on humans volunteers.
• Alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals.
• Animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects.
• Drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe.
• Animal tests may mislead researchers into ignoring potential cures and treatments.
• Only 5% of animals used in experiments are protected by US law.
• Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings.
• There is increasing demand for cruelty-free products.
• Most experiments involving animals are flawed, wasting the lives of the animal subjects.
• The Animal Welfare Act has not succeeded in preventing horrific cases of animal abuse in research laboratories.
• Medical breakthroughs involving animal research may still have been made without the use of animals.

This article was published on March 18, 2020, at Britannica's ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.

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Source: https://www.britannica.com/story/pro-and-con-animal-testing

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