Animal Experimentation: An Ethical Assessment

Introduction

Animal experimentation is scientific research that involves testing with live animals. Though animal experimentation can be inhumane, it is necessary because it advances scientific and medical knowledge. Using animals for research and testing is needed because only a whole, living organism can provide data that reflects a non-laboratory situation. Animal experimentation also provides a great deal of information about the animals themselves. This information is important because knowledge of animal habitats, habits, and physiology means that scientists can improve and save animal lives. Animal rights activists such as PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) believe that animals should not be used for food, clothing, entertainment or experimentation.

Animal Rights Activists

Animal rights activists ignore the tremendous health benefits that people have gained because of animal experimentation. Animal research has lead to better treatments and cures for Alzheimer's, cancer, cholera, diabetes, leprosy, poliomyelitis, rheumatoid arthritis, smallpox, and yellow fever, and AIDS. Vaccinated animals no longer die the rabies death of "Old Yeller." Childhood diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, and diphtheria are rare in the modern world. Lyme Disease was quickly understood because of animal experimentation. Pigs have been used to simulate human health conditions. Using animal parts for transplantation (xenografting) has had some successes and some failures. Surgical techniques have been developed and perfected because of animals. It is now possible to operate on a fetus by taking it out of the uterus, performing surgery, then putting the fetus back inside the mother to continue the pregnancy. This fetal surgery is being done to correct a condition called a diaphragmatic hernia which is almost always fatal. This surgery would never have been possible without researchers using living, pregnant animals to develop surgical techniques and to test the medicines that are also needed. There is no petri dish that can substitute for a living creature that has systems similar to humans.

Philosophical Approaches

Animals also serve as a trial, or experimental, human for measuring the effects of new inventions, space exploration, and isolation in places where humans have no experience. Only a whole, living animal can provide data that will lead to more knowledge about human responses because the testing will affect the whole animal. Animal research has provided understanding and treatments for exposure to radiation, extreme light, heat, and pressure changes. Some of the first space travels included chimpanzees, dogs, and even some reptiles. These voyages demonstrated that living things, particularly vertebrates, can survive with the newly designed air supply and protective equipment. Chimpanzees, because of their similarities to humans, have been placed in isolated places with weather extremes like deserts, rain forests, subzero areas, and even in high pressure places like the deep sea. The observations and data that have been obtained from studies using chimpanzees is invaluable because the chimpanzee is more than just a biological cousin. The chimpanzee is also a social animal, like humans, and because of this characteristic, researchers have been able to understand the emotional and psychological effects of isolation. Chimpanzees have been vital ...