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Reasons to Be Against Animal Testing

One truism in medical research is that "Virtually every medical achievement of the last century has depended directly or indirectly on research with animals." Five hundred British scientists--including three Nobel laureates--signed a 2005 petition by the Research Defense Society supporting an almost exact restatement of this sentiment that animal experimentation plays a critical role in medical advances. But despite widespread belief in the importance of animal research, there are a number of reasons to oppose scientific testing on animals.

  1. Limited Scientific Support

    • Even though medical research customarily includes animal models, little evidence exists supporting the idea that animal research is necessary for these medical advances. A 2004 study in the "British Medical Journal" evaluated six scientific reviews on how animal experiments influenced clinical research. It found many methodological problems with the animal studies, such as using too small samples sizes and conducting animal studies at the same time as human trials. Some of the animal research also found the studied treatments were dangerous, and yet researchers went ahead with the clinical trials, indicating they didn't consider the animal studies important.

    Unreliable

    • Using animal models provides inaccurate information about how various treatments will affect humans because of the biological differences between species. Developing vaccines for HIV using animal models has proven difficult since nonhuman animals do not become infected with HIV. Researchers have been limited to studying a related virus, SIV, in primates. One vaccine that appeared promising for treating rhesus macaques proved ineffective when given to humans. Another drug, thalidomide, causes birth defects in humans, but these abnormalities can only be occasionally repeated in other animal species. People can respond differently to the same medication, so it is not surprising that individuals in different species respond differently as well.

    Cruelty

    • Many animal experiments inflict intense physical and psychological pain on animals. In 2007 more than 77,000 animals were used in painful research without being provided any pain relief--and this number doesn't include mice, rats or birds, which receive no legal protection from the Animal Welfare Act and make up 90 percent of animals used in scientific research. One common test that causes severe pain in laboratory animals is the Draize test. Researchers place chemicals directly in animals' eyes, use clips to hold the animals' eyes open and restrain the animals' heads in stocks. Once the test is completed, which can take several days, they kill the animals to study their organs.

    Alternatives

    • Scientists have developed some alternatives to animal experimentation. In high schools and colleges, computer and plastic models can replace dissections of live animals. Corrositex, a synthetic skin, tests the toxicity of chemicals. The IC50 test, an in vitro test evaluating how toxic chemicals are to cells, can replace the out-of-date LC50 test that administered a chemical to a group of animals and identified what concentration of the chemical was necessary to kill half of them. The FDA-approved technique of microdosing--introducing tiny amounts of a drug to test how it affects the human body--provides reliable information about how new drugs will affect humans.

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