Debate Animal Testing

[VisionofMilotic]

As I read some of the stories developing in the news about treatment of dogs in laboratories like the NIH (National Institutes of Health) funded project where beagle puppies were made to take experimental drugs, had their vocal cords cut so their pained howls couldn't be heard, then were killed and dissected, and I thought it was worthwhile to have a discussion about whether using live animals for research is something we should still do as a society.

Do you think the data obtained from animal experiments is worth the suffering it inflicts on the animal?

I myself have to say no. As someone who loves wildlife and has pets of her own I find our testing on animals so brutal that it breaks my heart. I also don't think this kind of research benefits humankind as a whole to the extent that we are perhaps led to believe. The idea is that we test on animals to save more human lives, but in the US (where I live) a lot of the research we use animals for isn't even in the field of medicine, we'll pour corrosive chemicals into a rabbit's eyes and down their throats for things that seem petty like developing bath and beauty product formulas, or household cleaning agents. Even when animal testing is performed to learn more about diseases and their potential cures, the results of non-human animal data is often not a reliable way to predict the effects on a human being. Though the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) requires testing on animals before they will give their approval for health agencies to use medicine on people, their own study found that 92% of drugs that passed the safety phase in animal testing went on to still fail for humans in the clinical trials, and couldn't be approved for the general public, and half of what was approved got withdrawn soon after due to dangerous side-effects that tests on animals couldn't foreshadow.

Despite our physiological similarities as mammals it goes without saying that we're still not monkeys, cats, dogs, guinea pigs and the other animals that are used in experiments, and we can respond differently when exposed to the same thing. Since there's alternative research we can and do perform that doesn't kill animals like using computer models, in vitro methods/ testing on just a single cell, human-patient simulators, I personally think animal testing is the more outdated and inhumane path and that it should stop.

That's my opinion, some of you may agree, or you may have different views on what defines morality from this philosophical perspective, or find that there continue to be compelling contributions to science from animal testing.

That's why the forum is here so you can give your take, comment, exchange ideas, discuss with one another in the spirit of debate and seek out your own information. How do you feel about the issue at hand?

 

[Corrin]

The biggest thing is ethics. Many human experiments in the past caused devastation because they weren't done ethically or honestly and people got sick and hurt.
The example that comes to mind is the prison one.

However, humans can consent and I don't believe animals should be put through pain and unnecessary death for humans. One thing I could suggest is:
1. Get proper consent. By proper I mean not a child and not someone who is incapacitated in some way. They have to be able to understand.
2. Provide any medical care they need as a result of the experiments free of cost. Any medical means mental health too.
3. Provide a clearly written contract and give each person the time to read it and make up their mind.
4. Screen the people who will be in charge. Go through their records and history.

It may sound costly, but as stated above, a successful experiment on animals doesn't mean the product will even work on humans. We're different species. A medicine that stops allergies in mice is in no way guaranteed to work on a person. That being said, make it a mouse medication.

 

[Nah]

Animal testing is/was always kind of a necessity since at the end of the day, you need to see how something works in practice, how it works on a real organism. You can't really rely on how it's supposed to work out on paper or in a computer model. Even if the results naturally don't translate 1:1 in humans, or fail certain benchmarks, it's still probably not completely useless either, and really, people would rather that the riskiest phase(s) of testing be carried out on animals instead of humans.

That said, the "organ on a chip" thing sounds very promising, but....I'm too much of a cynic or a pessimist or whatever people would say is the most fitting description, to believe that we have such a conveniently perfect solution here. There must be some catch, some limitation or problem right?

 

[ReKoil]

Personally, no.
I feel like it's pretty much a necessary evil though.