Human and Animal Interrelationships - Term Paper Example

nimal research") The significance of such experiments is difficult to exaggerate, however it is important to prove the necessity and the role of such researches. The main advances that changed the medicine due to animal research are discovery of penicillin, first antibiotic for tuberculosis, medicine for meningitis, vaccine for poliomyelitis, introduction of kidney transplantation and many others ("Medical advances and animal research") All the researches, mentioned above, used mice in the experiments, which together with rats are the most popular animals of medical research.

Rats and mice are inexpensive, unpretentious in care and food, live only for 2 or 3 years. The discoveries, which were made as a result of the experiments with mice and rats, helped their authors to win more than 30 Nobel Prizes. One of the significant discoveries, which engaged mice together with rabbits, was development of in vitro fertilization, which was performed by Robert Edwards in 1950-1960s. However he received his Nobel Prize only in 2010. This discovery helped the infertile families to have babies: more than 4 million of people were born due to the results of experiments ("The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2010. Robert G. Edwards").

Another fatal disease, for which the scientists hope to find the treatment using animal research, is Duchene dystrophy. Duchene muscular dystrophy is one of the most widespread forms of muscles dystrophy. The gene, which is responsible for muscle development, is corrupted, and muscles cells eventually die in the organism. The disease is congenital and affects mostly boys. There is no treatment for Duchene dystrophy at present, however scientists hope to find one soon with the help of animals, which are used for testing agents, that might help to reverse the deadly processes in muscles.

The Italian scientists experimented with using stem cells from the blood vessels of dogs to treat their natural dystrophy mutation, which helped to stop its