The Benefits Of Animal Testing

Animal testing is the use of animals in order to determine the safety of a newly invented product, mainly medicine, drug and cosmetics. Animals are the perfect models to test on since they are similar to humans in some ways and to a certain degree, they can predict the potential effects of a product. However, during the process of testing, animals are brutally neglected and are treated with almost no care. Such practices are inhumane; thus, in 1959 Russell and Burch published The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, which introduced the idea of the 3Rs principle — replacement, reduction, and refinement. This idea highlights the treatment that animals should receive in an experimental setting, and gradually it promoted the development …show more content…
According to Ferdowsian and Beck(2011), these animals often times do not receive sufficient amount of care, especially mice, rats and birds — species that are not valued as much as others. These species are to live low-quality lives that mentally and physically wears them down. However, over the past decades, national and international laws and guidelines have been created to improve living conditions and aim to provide basic protection for all animals. Such guidelines gradually encouraged people to find alternatives to animal testing. According to National Research Council(2007), in 1993, the NIH Reauthorization Act was passed to announce the need for alternative to toxicity testing. The NRC then stated that advances in systems biology, computational toxicology, epigenetic can enhance the research of certain products, as it steps closer to human origin. Finally, in 2008, the EPA, NIH, and Chemical Genomics Center followed NRC’s report and began developing new methods to toxicity testing. According to Johns Hopkins University, the EPA is still in the process of developing virtual human organs today. These researches on alternatives to animal testing will reduce, refine and replace the use of animal testing. Lastly, not only do animals gain a better quality life, the research would also be able to make products safer for humans to use and make …show more content…
They are subjected to testing that ranges from testing of new drugs to skin burning. According to New England Anti-Vivisection Society, these animals are severely neglected, and suffer just by merely existing. Some of these sufferings include: long-term isolation, electric shocks, withholding of food and water, genetic manipulation, immobilization of specific body parts and separation of infants from mother. In toxicity tests, animals receive the test substance everyday for up to two years without rest or recovery periods. Most of the animals die before the study ends; those that are lucky to survive are killed at the end of the study (with the exception of chimpanzees.) Moreover, animals don't only suffer from painful protocols, they also suffer from the accumulation of stress day by day living in poor conditions. Such laboratory conditions include crowded cages, lack of enrichment and bright lights — environments in which the animals cannot express their natural behaviors. Although, animals do not experience complex emotions and feelings like humans, they do share similar genetic and physiological traits with humans, and can express pain in a comparable way as humans. According to Gregory NG (2004), recent research discovered that mice are capable of experiencing pain and stress, and more importantly they are capable of expressing empathy, as they become even