Over decades, the debate of animals being used for testing and experimentation to determine the safety of products has become heated. Society has drastically opposing sensitivity, opinion, and perception toward animals. On one side, many recognize and know animals to be companions. Some religions, such as Hinduism, even go as far as hosting festivals to honor and worship animals. However, many people view these creatures no more than aiding medical practice or contributing to experimental research. There is no denying that recent breakthroughs within medicine are extraordinary, but there is also no need to use animals for laboratory experiments for the mere fact that this is the method that has been used for decades. Technology is a beautiful thing, and with the constant advances, there is no excuse as to why these helpless creatures are still being abused for medical purposes. Although, even labeled as “mild”, there are procedures conducted that will cause pain, suffering, and even death. Aside from the extreme unethical and immoral issues, there are also complications of just how correctly these substances or drugs will actually react in real human situations (Gesualdi).
According to Human Society International, animal testing is defined as procedures performed on livings animals for purposes of research into basic biology and diseases, assessing the effectiveness of new medical products, and testing the human health and/or environmental safety of consumer products such as cosmetics, household cleaners, food additives, and pharmaceuticals (Seidle). According to the 2017 USDA Annual Report Animal Usage by Fiscal Year for research statistics: in both private and public institutions, 792,168 animals, covered by the Animal Welfare Act, were used in research. This excludes animals not covered by the Animal Welfare Act such as mice, rats, and fish and around 140,000 animals kept in research facilities that have yet to be used in any study (Research Facility Annual Summary & Archive Reports). The animal Welfare Act (AWA) is a federal law established in 1966 due to the prevalent concern for the dogs and cats being utilized in research at the time, taking into consideration the vast amount of reported thefts of dogs and cats for practice in research facilities (The Animal Welfare Act). The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) uses two primary tools to aid the AWA compliance: inspections which are managed by an animal care inspector or veterinary medical inspector, and the next being investigations that are handled with or by the APHIS Investigative and Enforcement Services (Gesualdi).
Practicing with alternatives for animal testing does not mean human lives with be put at risk, alternatively it will allow us to enhance the accuracy of our sciences while drastically reducing animal cruelty.
Animals are sentient beings which leaves no question to whether animal experiments will cause an immense amount of suffering to the vast number to the animal involved. While researchers attempt to decrease stress and agony to the animals being worked on, suffering for these creatures is inevitably imminent. Simply, there is no way to ease the mental and psychological pain when there is someone inflicting disease or injury while being held in a sterile cage. While researchers have the good intention of finding a cure or averting illness and disease, some medical researchers fail to acknowledge that the animals they are conducting experiments on are not just an unconscious being without pain receptors. Certainly, laboratory animals are evaluated as an object they can manipulate in any sense for the sake of a clinical trial, but most of these animals spend the majority of their lives in an artificial environment with no windows and artificial lighting.
Scientifically, failure in animal-based toxicology trials has been repeatedly documented to inaccurately anticipate the way humans will react to chemicals. While trials may present great improvement for the animals with the same disease or disorder humans may have, this outcome often does not pertain to trials on human subjects. For instance, acetaminophen, an active ingredient in Tylenol, is extremely lethal to cats and morphine, a common pain reliever, causes them to be hyper-active. Human anatomy, metabolism, and physiology differ drastically from animals, causing data from animal experimentation to transfer or apply inaccurately to human condition.
According to the US National Library of Medicine Nation Institutes of Health, there are three major conditions that explain why any animal-based medical experimentation fails to reliably inform human health: the effects of the laboratory environment and other variables on study outcomes, the difference between animal models of disease and human disease, and species differences and physiology and genetics (Akhtar). Laboratory environment can be a major influence on an animals behavior. Surroundings such as noises being made or even the room they are in can alter what was their once normal behavior to complete anxiety. For example, if a researcher is trying to catch and remove a frightened animal from its cage, just that little movement can drastically increase and/or prolong elevations in their stress markers. An escalation in stress influenced by a laboratory environment or experiments could ultimately affect the outcome of test results. When stressed, rats will experience intestinal damage and could also develop chronic inflammatory conditions, which would add to the inaccuracy of the data being collected (Akhtar). While stress can manipulate important test results, there is a multitude of different environmental scenarios that can prove how they can physically and psychologically affect animals. For instance, even the type of flooring on which an animal is tested in a spinal cord injury experiment can affect whether a drug shows benefit or causes more complications (Akhtar).
Regarding the ramifications of human disease, inducing a disease found in humans into an animal model, is far too complex and difficult to translate anything precisely. Even if the animal experiment follows the laws and guidelines of the AWA and the FDA, the experiment has a high possibility of failing due to the contrast of how an animal’s body deals with the human disease versus how our bodies handle that same disease. A prime example of the difficulty of animals able to model disease correctly is a stroke. According to the American Stroke Association, a stroke is a disease that affects the arteries leading to and within the brain. It is ranked fifth highest cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the United States (Fuster). Researchers have not discovered a way to model a stroke in animals efficiently. To counteract the failure, many argue that there needs to be more practice of standardized animal study design protocols. The animals used would have a preexisting condition or two chronic diseases that are found in humans, taking human medications frequently, and be different ages and both genders. To limit inconsistency and improve the quality of the stroke testing, there was a protocol implemented in 1999, that was later renewed in 2009, called the STAIR. Another promising stroke treatment arose 2006 labeled NXY-059, which used a radical trapping agent that is neuroprotective in animal models of stroke (Kennedy). NXY-059 was created to lower the possibility of disability following a ischemic stroke. Despite the high expectations for this new breakthrough drug, it failed in the clinical trials. There are several other repeated failures in animal based drug development trials such as Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, and cancer.
Dr. Elias Zerhouni said: “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans. We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. The problem is that animal testing hasn’t worked, and its time we stopped dancing around the problem. We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for uses in human to understand disease biology in humans (Alternatives to Animal Testing).” If the lack of compatibility between animal models and humans, then the logical solution would be to use human-relevant tools within research. There are many different alternatives for medical trial testing.
Harvard Wyss Institute has created a micro-engineered device that have human cells lined inside and regenerate human organ functions called In Vitro Testing. In trials, these chips mimic various types of human physiological responses to toxins and medicine. This method of testing is less inexpensive than animal testing. With the chips size, money is saved by having elevated turn around time and the amount of drugs being used is significantly lessened.
Another method is In Silico, more commonly known as Computer Modeling. Researchers have made computers that can simulate human biology and show the progression and development of disease. Different experiment data have showed that this model has proven to have positive results of how new drugs will react with the human body. There is s computer technique called Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR). QSARs are able to take the place of regular animal testing by evaluating existing drugs that could potentially be dangerous. This method of testing is being used more for government testing to avoid using animals.
Human-simulators have replaced ninety-seven percent of the U.S. medical school’s animal laboratories. A life-like test dummy that bleed, breathe, die, and even talk has been teaching medical students that exceeds cruel animal trials. These simulators are able to be given injections and medications and react accordingly, giving the desired response.
Microdosing, another alternative to animal testing, is a procedure done with human volunteers. A very small drug dose is given to the volunteer and is monitored to examine how the body reacts to the drug This method can contribute important experimental information on the safety and accuracy before a full human trial is conducted. Researchers regularly use cats, monkeys, and rats for experiments with functional magnetic resonance imaging, this imaging can severally damage the animal brain. Using human volunteers for this type of imaging can replace these horrible techniques and give more accurate results. According to the PETA website, these modern techniques allow the human brain to be safety studied down to the level of as single neuron (as in the case of intracranial electroencephalography), and researchers can even temporarily and reversible induce brain disorders using transcranial magnetic stimulation (Alternatives to Animal Testing).
While many research professionals recognize that the inaccurate and inhumane act of animal experiments must be replaced, there are other medical professional who still argue for continuing animal research trials. Most will argue that animal testing benefits medical researchers by discovering new treatments and breakthrough medicines. While this may be true, animal testing is only used because this is what researchers are used to, it is common practice. Technology is constantly advancing and new alternatives are emerging in the medical realm. There is no use for animal experiments any longer because of microdosing, human simulators, In Vitro testing, and much more.
Another argument would be that animal tests provide a “safety net” before humans are using or being exposed to hazardous drugs. While administering dangerous drugs to animals is seen as routine to some researchers, nine out of ten clinical drug trails fail. There are subtle and also major differences between animal and human anatomy. Since our anatomy is drastically different from an animal, it is extremely difficult to induce a human disease in an animal model and expecting the data to transfer correctly. Simple environmental scenarios or continual stress can also cause the data collected from the animal trial experiments to be manipulated or incorrect.
In conclusion, animals have close psychological human shared characteristics like pain, suffering, and fear. With all the new found alternatives, there is no longer a need to inflict pain, distress or even death on these creatures. It has been proven that most animal-based drug trials fail due to the inability to accurately determine how the human body will react to certain drugs. Inducing a human disease into an animal is extremely complex and nearly impossible to be transferred properly. Since the results of animal testing is proven unreliable, this confirms that testing on animals does more harm than good and is potentially dangerous to humans. In my opinion, it would be helpful to deter researchers from animal experimentation and encourage them to practice with the abundant alternatives available.
Together, we can stop animal testing. Always speak up about the knowledge you now know about the cruelty and inaccuracy of animal testing. There are multiple charities and organizations that are constantly collecting donations to save animals from laboratories. If you do decide to donate, please make sure that you are not donating to a charities that funds to animal experiments. A less popular way to support is donating your body to science. Organs and live tissue are extremely valuable to medical students and researchers.