Discuss the issues surrounding the ethics of human and/or animal research
The broadening of people 's understanding of biology and psychology in the past centuries, has not resulted in a full comprehension of what animals feel or think, although the majority of findings in these scientific fields were based on animal models.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is a lack of information on the subject of similarity of the mental experiences of animals used in research, excuses for neglect and ill-treatment of laboratory animals should not be made. One of the fundamental notions is that the 3Rs (refinement, reduction, and replacement, based on the work of William Russell and Rex Burch (Russell and Burch, 1959)) need to be implemented in all …show more content…
One good example of an article against animal testing is that of Barnard and Kaufman (1997). They identify the use of animals in research as deeply ingrained scientific tradition, which may lead to redundant data and misleading conclusions. Barnard and Kaufman (1997) also emphasized that the higher stress levels and the unnatural living conditions of laboratory animals should be kept in mind, because they can cause a bias in results. The authors make a cogent case against animal testing, showing that “animal experiments serve primarily as rhetorical devices”, yet they base their conclusions on partial evidence. An example of this is the citing of single cases versus official government data mostly from experiments with misuse of animal models. In like manner, Carbone (2011) criticizes the most popular practice in toxicity research, used in an almost unchanged form in the past 50-80 years. He argues that the method of linear data extrapolation from animal models treated with high doses of chemical compounds (or ionizing radiation) to human models is untrustworthy. Carbone 's argument is persuasive: from a mathematical point of view, all attempts to extrapolate outside the data set are error-prone; from a biological stance---although animals and humans share anatomical and …show more content…
The findings show from a historical perspective that there is a significant improvement in animal treatment. However, there is currently a lack of agreement between scientists on whether animals continue to be an irreplaceable tool in research. On the one hand, the cited results imply that animals play a crucial part in discovery, primarily because cell cultures cannot be representative of the effects of higher hierarchical levels of living matter, and in silico models are oversimplifications of complex behaviours. On the other hand, administration of stricter regulations on the participation of animals in research, as in cases that evaluate effects on organismal level, would allow scientists to reach a middle ground in their opinions about animal
The broadening of people 's understanding of biology and psychology in the past centuries, has not resulted in a full comprehension of what animals feel or think, although the majority of findings in these scientific fields were based on animal models.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is a lack of information on the subject of similarity of the mental experiences of animals used in research, excuses for neglect and ill-treatment of laboratory animals should not be made. One of the fundamental notions is that the 3Rs (refinement, reduction, and replacement, based on the work of William Russell and Rex Burch (Russell and Burch, 1959)) need to be implemented in all …show more content…
One good example of an article against animal testing is that of Barnard and Kaufman (1997). They identify the use of animals in research as deeply ingrained scientific tradition, which may lead to redundant data and misleading conclusions. Barnard and Kaufman (1997) also emphasized that the higher stress levels and the unnatural living conditions of laboratory animals should be kept in mind, because they can cause a bias in results. The authors make a cogent case against animal testing, showing that “animal experiments serve primarily as rhetorical devices”, yet they base their conclusions on partial evidence. An example of this is the citing of single cases versus official government data mostly from experiments with misuse of animal models. In like manner, Carbone (2011) criticizes the most popular practice in toxicity research, used in an almost unchanged form in the past 50-80 years. He argues that the method of linear data extrapolation from animal models treated with high doses of chemical compounds (or ionizing radiation) to human models is untrustworthy. Carbone 's argument is persuasive: from a mathematical point of view, all attempts to extrapolate outside the data set are error-prone; from a biological stance---although animals and humans share anatomical and …show more content…
The findings show from a historical perspective that there is a significant improvement in animal treatment. However, there is currently a lack of agreement between scientists on whether animals continue to be an irreplaceable tool in research. On the one hand, the cited results imply that animals play a crucial part in discovery, primarily because cell cultures cannot be representative of the effects of higher hierarchical levels of living matter, and in silico models are oversimplifications of complex behaviours. On the other hand, administration of stricter regulations on the participation of animals in research, as in cases that evaluate effects on organismal level, would allow scientists to reach a middle ground in their opinions about animal