Moral Issues In Animal Testing

Going to an average convenience store is a weekly activity for many Americans. As we pass the cleaning aisle, the medication for headaches, and occasionally the mischievous peek at the beauty aisle, many of us aren’t thinking of how these products were produced, we’re busy thinking about how much we can spend without a family member or your bank getting mad at you. However, the thought of how these products come to be should perhaps be on more people’s minds. Every day on the news stories of torture and harm within human society flickers across the screen, creating an empathizing heartache for those who are suffering through atrocities and barbarity. When one sees a child’s broken story playing emotional responses are let out and a deep need …show more content…
To answer this question we have to examine three variables: how these scientists are affecting the animals, the alternatives they discount, and the obligation that follows them into the lab. These scientists are affecting the animals within these laboratories more than anyone else will in their life. Twenty million animals die every year according to the reports mentioned earlier; all of these animals had a scientist testing over them during their last moments. It can be resolved by this fact that scientists are affecting animals lives by not having this moral obligation and should therefore be the first to gain it. Plus, to add on to the changes scientists themselves need to change, there are alternatives to animal testing. Animal testing is not necessary in a time where we have in vitro testing and stem cells from humans to determine consequences for these products. Scientists discount these alternatives though and claim that these testing methods are not always effective, but this brings us to a new criteria for an already established need for moral change. Scientists, by following this moral obligation, create an obligation to find new alternatives as well. A quote by Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez states, “where alternatives don 't exist, the moral task of science is to discover them.” We must circumvent the inherent speciesism within ourselves just as we did racism and sexism despite the consequences we find make it “worth