Animal Experimentation - Essay Example

Others say that animal testing has been proved worthwhile and therefore should continue, but that new laws should be made in order to prevent cruelty to laboratory animals. This debate about the pros and cons of animal testing is one that elicits strong feelings often resulting in violence, threats, and hunger strikes. I personally believe that animal testing is wrong and that alternate ways should be devised for experimentation. (Mattingly, 1990) No doubt animals have played a vital role in almost all advancements in medicine.

Treatments for heart diseases are one example, including open-heart surgery. Perfection of kidney dialysis also occurred through animal experimentation. Recently, animals are being used to determine treatments for major diseases like Alzheimer's disease and AIDS; and if a cure were found, it would be a milestone in medical history. But there is a limit to everything, and there should be a limit to this. Several medical historians claim that clinical research, examination, and human autopsy were the main components in the chief discoveries of heart pathology, cancer, immunology, and psychology.

We cannot say assuredly as to what really lead to treatments for the above-mentioned diseases. But we have proof that laboratory animals are treated in an extremely cruel way with having to undergo excruciating pain. It high time people consider them as living beings too. (Anderegg, 2006), (King, 2007) Regarding the credibility of animal testing, it has not always shown promise in every aspect, often leading to a series of unfortunate events. For example, in 1963, a relation had been formed between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, but every method to cause lung cancer in animals had failed.

Due to the long span of fifty years spent on this research, the lung cancer-smoking theory lost its validity and health warnings on cigarette packs appeared much later than they should have been, causing a lot of deaths by lung cancer. Another example is the relation of asbestos with cancer, and yet another one is the relation of alcohol with cirrhosis. Many other advancements were prolonged due to misleading information from animal testing. An extremely important one is the vaccine for polio, which was developed wrongly in a monkey cell culture and then later corrected in human cell culture.

(Anderegg, 2006)Furthermore, due to differences in animal and human models, experts only tested parts that resembled those of humans without paying any heed to the overall anatomical, physiological and pathological variations. Because diseases usually have body-wide effects, these tests did not always appear to be reliable. (Anderegg, 2006)In addition, animal experimentation has uncovered a large range of lethal nonhuman viruses, which have caused several deaths in the laboratory along with a few outbreaks.

Moreover, gene therapy in animals to produce human proteins, and their transfer into humans exposes them to dangerous pathogens. (Anderegg, 2006)Taking an ethical view of this subject, I consider animal testing immoral, cruel, and unnecessary. Animals are no lesser creatures when it comes to emotions, especially suffering pain. Hence, even the idea of subjecting helpless animals to extreme pain and unnecessary death is inappropriate. (King, 2007). The reason that