Animals for drug testing - Essay Example

One of the more controversial issues confronting the medical and pharmaceutical research industries is, without doubt, the use of animals for drug testing. The debate over the ethics of the practices and its practical benefits has raged on for close to three decades now (Speth), with neither opponents nor proponents willing, or able, to understand the opposing viewpoint and position. Proponents of the use of animals for drug and chemical testing have consistently and persistently maintained that medical and pharmaceutical research cannot proceed were live specimens, as in lab animals, removed from the equation. This camp has further maintained that the practice has led to the development of countless of drugs which, in turn, have been responsible for the saving of millions of human lives (Jones). The anti-animal testing campaigners argue the exact opposite, not only insisting that the use of animals for drug testing is completely inadequate for drug-safety testing but that safer alternatives exist. While conceding to the fact that the use of lab animals for drug and medical research may have been at the core of some medical advances, the fact is that the use of animals for drug testing is unethical, costly and unsafe, in addition to which, ethical, less expensive and safer alternatives are available. The proponents of animal testing maintain that without the use of live specimens, the medical and pharmaceutical communities would not have been able to acquire the anatomical knowledge of the human body, they currently possess. There is no doubt that this claim is partially valid. As Joan Dunayer, a medical researcher notes, the similarities between the human and the ape anatomy have allowed medical researcher, through vivisection, to explore the ape anatomy and through that, acquire an expanded understanding of the human one. Certainly, one cannot ignore the fact that the dissections carried out on human corpses have been the primary contributors to the mapping of the human body but, the fact remains that the observation and examination of a live human specimen is, or was up until a certain time, impossible. The use of apes provided the medical research community with the ability to conduction vivisections on live specimens and, in so doing, acquire a significant, and invaluable, understanding of the human body at work. Similarly, the medical and pharmaceutical communities claim that without the use of lab animals they would not have been able to develop much of the chemical and drug cures now being routinely used to save millions of human lives. As Jones argues, live animals are used in the research lab setting in order to determine whether or not the introduction of a certain chemical compound into the body reacts with specific viruses, bacteria and disease, resulting in their elimination. Secondly they are further used to test whether the cure, or the chemical compound which has been determined to successfully eliminate a particular disease, virus or bacteria, has any side effects, both long term and short-term, harmful or benign (Jones). In other words, animal testing is essential for both the development of effective drug cure and their later testing for safety before production and licensing for human use. While the pro-animal testing argument appears strong, the fact remains that the practice is inhuman and incontrovertibly unethical. Alan M. Goldberg and Thomas Hartung, both science researchers, note that over the past four decades "hundreds of millions of animals" were sacrificed in the name of medical and chemical research. The unethical aspect of the stated is better clarified when the method of their death, invariably involving prolonged and senseless torture and suffering, is considered (Goldberg and Hartung). Irrespective of its best intentions, animal testing is fundamentally based on the deliberate infliction of pain, suffering, disease and death on countless of millions of animals. Despite the undeniably unethical character of animal testing, proponents have claimed it justified because it serves a greater good. That greater good, as they claim, is medical and pharmaceutical advancements, culminating in the saving of millions of human lives. This position, as expressed by the proponents of animal testing, is not entirely accurate. As Kathy Archibald, the Director of Europeans for Medical Progress, clarifies, not a year goes by without a significant amount of drugs being recalled from the market and their production banned because their use on humans has proven to be unsafe and to have long-lasting, harmful side-effects. Indeed, there is not a year which goes by without one chemical drug or another, being revealed as the immediate cause of human fatalities. This is despite the fact that they were supposedly proven safe through the animal testing method (Archibald). A prime example is the thalidomide case. The thalidomide compound, as Jones explains, was supposedly proven safe in the animal testing process and was, subsequently used for the production of an entire family of drugs. These drugs were declared safe for use by pregnant women. However, when used, thalidomide was proven far from safe and, indeed, to "induce birth defects" (Jones). This is just one example of the very many which prove that what may be safe for lab animals is not necessarily so for humans, thereby supporting the argument that animal testing does not establish the safety of drug, as proponents claim. Apart from being an unsound method for testing drug safety, animal testing is extremely costly and, more often than not, an unjustifiable waste of research effort and resources. A research carried out by the United Kingdom's Medial Research Council established, as did the United States' Environmental Defense Organization, that just to test the safety of one-quarter of the currently used, although untested chemicals, forty years, $11.5 billion and 13 million animals are required (Goldberg and Hartung). Needless to say, in terms of cost and time, this is not feasible. Indeed, the medical researcher, Robert C. Speth, arrives at the same conclusion in his article n the use of lab animals for chemical research purposes. As he writes, lab animals have been used for the past 15 years to test various possible AIDS cures. Over that period, billions of dollars and millions of animals were sacrificed and, the end result was that this method o research did not produce a single anti-AIDS treatment. In fact, the currently available AIDS treatments were tested on humans, not on animals (Speth). The implications of this argument and the facts cited is simply that the use of animals, either for the development of new drugs or for the testing of the safety of chemicals is excessively time-consuming an very expensive, not to mention the fact that it quite often does not produce any results. The pro-animal testing camp argues that the use of animals for the mentioned purpose is the only feasible strategy for medial and pharmaceutical research and development (Wolff and Boyd). This is completely inaccurate, as numerous alternatives exist. According to Speth, a proven alternative lies in he use of living human tissues for chemical and development. The process is simple and involves extracting human tissue specimens, injecting them with the disease, virus, or bacteria being research and then with the chemical in question to determine whether or not treatment occurs. The use of live human tissues is also invaluable in the determination of the safety of a particular chemical (Speth). It should be emphasized that this is not a possible alternative to animal testing but a proven and established one, in addition to which it is infinitely less expensive and inarguably more ethical. In addition to the use of live human tissues as an alternative to conducting research on animals, a second viable alterative exists in the form of computer modeling. As biever, a medical researcher and technician explains, technology has reached the point where it has successfully been able to produce highly accurate computer models of every human organ. In addition, the software which controls these models has been programmed so that the functioning and reaction of these models is identical to their human counterpart. These models, as Biever explains, sand out as a completely viable alternative to the se of animals for research purposes and, indeed, have already proven their accuracy over a series of rigorous and stringent tests. Furthermore, in addition to being a highly ethical method for chemical research and development, Biever insists that the use of computer models is economical both in terms of time and cost. In other words, proven alternatives to the use of animals exist. In the final analysis, it is apparent that the use of animals for the research and development of chemicals may have, at one time, been the optimal method for the development of drugs but, time have changed. While not denying the contributions that this method may have made to medicine at one time, it remains impossible to deny that the use of animals does not accurately establish the safety of a chemical. Not only that, but it is an extremely costly, time-consuming and highly unethical method. At this point in time, there is simply no excuse for the continued use of animals for this purpose, especially that ethical, less costly, speedier and infinitely more accurate alternatives exist. It is, thus, time to end the use of animals in chemical research and development, if not for the sake of the animals, then out of consideration for the human beings who later become the victims of drugs whose safety is questionable. Works Cited Archibald, Kathy. "Animal Testing." Ecologist. Nov. 2006. 36, 9. Biever, Celeste. "Can Computer Models Replace Animal Testing" New Scientist. 15 May 2006. 190, 2551. Dunayer, Joan. "In the Name of Science: The Language of Vivisection." Organization and Environment. Dec. 200. 13, 4. Goldberg, Alan M. and Thomas Hartung. "protecting More Than Animals." Scientific American. Jan. 2006. 294, 1. Jones, Lee. "Pro-Animal Testing." New Internationalist. Sep. 2006. Speth, Robert C. Animals Suffer to no Benefit." Wall Street Journal. 30 Dec. 1996. Wolff, Jonathan and Kenneth Boyd. "Animal Rights and Wrongs." New Scientist. 11 March, 2006. 189, 2542. Read More