Animal Experimentation - Research Paper Example

As a result, The use of animals in scientific experiments increased dramatically especially after the discovery of anesthetics in mid-nineteenth century; the number of non-human animals used in scientific investigations in UK alone increased from one million per year in early nineteenth century to exceed five millions per year in the 1970s. This huge increase in the use of animals for research purposes was paralleled with an increase in the resistance and oppositions to animal testing. The animal testing controversy involves three sides; a group that is in favor of using animals for medical research debating that human superiority to animals justifies the use of animals in experiments.

On the other hand, there is group of people who opposes the use of animals in experiments for ethical concerns. Obviously, both of these two sides are extreme; we cannot allow animals to suffer just based on the proponent’s claim nor can we stop animal tests due to the fact that it would stop humans from advancing in medical fields. This controversy resulted in new laws and regulations such as, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) that limits the number of animals that should be tested and the level of pain an animal can endure.

Although, of course, experimenting on animals should be regulated, discontinuing this practice must never happen since it would negatively impact the advancement in the medical fields which will affect both humans’ race and non-human animals. The anti- animal testing movement argues that animals have the same rights as humans and therefore we should not be carrying out experiments on them. Tom Regan, a professor at the North Carolina University, argues that animals have similar emotions to our emotional beings, and considering them inferior species is similar to racism.

According to Charles Darwin, best known as the father of evolution, humans are different from other species in “degree” not in “kind”. Thus Regan believes that “speciesism” which points to the view that the specie that we belong to is superior to other species is the same as racism and sexism. Furthermore, the response that we would get if we ask ourselves what gives us the right to carry experiments on animal for our benefits would be that we humans are more intelligent than other animals.

But what about the case of infants or some mentally disabled patients, wouldn’t there be some animals that are more intelligent in comparison to these two examples? So, animals that are less intelligent than humans shall not be tested for human benefits unless we are ready to scarify some of our specie members. Similar to the philosophy of human rights which state that all people should be treated equally, animal rights as well demand that all animals should be equally treated, which prevent the harm of individuals to benefits other().

Humans as well as other animals experience life, and their rights to live and treated equally should not be ignored. Why should animals be the victims of enduring harmful and procedural experiments that would yield benefits that are mostly useful for humans? The answer to this question is the fact there is not many alternative, and only animals are qualified for carrying out medical experiments. The limitation of sources to gain essential information is the reason why animals are used in experiments; there are no computers