Use Of Animals In Laboratory Experiments example essay topic

Do all animals have the same rights as humans? Some but not all, animal rights activists believe animals have inherent legal and moral rights, just as humans do. According to this viewpoint it is unethical to use animals for any purpose, whether for pets, research, recreation, clothing, or as food (Press 17). Animal use in testing is a huge controversial issue.

Some believe animals have the same rights as humans and should for no reason be used as test subjects for research. Others, including members of medical and scientific communities say it is unethical not to use animals in research because animal experiments can lead to medical discoveries that improve the health and well-being of both humans and animals (Leepson 304). Human health will not improve without animal experimentation. There is of course two sides to this issue.

Worldwide, animals are used in numerous experiments which inflict pain and suffering to the animal. The first testing of animals started over one hundred years ago. Since then, animal testing has been a source of emotional conflict for humans. In 1966, the Animal Welfare Act took place (307). This was the start of the animal rights movement. Over the years, animal activists have become increasingly vocal and / or destructive.

The ways in which animal activists try to get their message across to the public varies greatly. Some conduct letter-writing campaigns, others attack laboratories and harass scientists (Green 204) One of these groups is the PETA founded in 1980 by Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The group works on a wide range of issues such as biochemical testing, cosmetic testing, dissection, factory farming, neglect and abuse to animals in pet stores, and through hunting and trapping, and the wearing of fur, and non-leather footwear (Masci 686). The PETA is not known to be a violent group. Instead it often pulls public stunts.

For example three members dressed in rabbit suits and chained themselves to a flagpole in front of Gillette head quarters in Boston, Mass. to protest the company's use of animals in product testing. The stunt was an embarrassment to the company. While PETA may be the most visible animal rights group, it is by no means alone. There are dozens of rights groups who pursue a more far-reaching agenda. One of these groups is the ALF, Animal Liberation Front. This group emerged in the United States in the late 1970's and has claimed responsibility for destroying or damaging more than one hundred labs and farms around the nation (686).

In a world of animal testing there are a wide range of tests. These tests are done for multiple purposes, from finding a cure for a disease to testing the harshness of a shampoo or floor cleaner. Many activists claim that animal testing is not only unethical but also often scientifically unproductive. There have been some medical advances of course but the pay off is slight. When you re doing billions of animal experiments, it would be a miracle if there weren t some developments, says George Cave an animal activist. When Dr. Hamm was told what George Cave said, Hamm came back with a strong argument.

He discussed how childhood leukemia, used to be a death sentence but now those kids get to go home. He also discussed Hodgkin's disease and how it is now a treatable cancer when ten years ago it was also a death sentence. Another argument he stated was how we can treat some types of liver cancer today and the research that got us there was done on animals because it had to be. There are no other alternatives exist that could give us this progress (Green 204). One species that humans tend to use often in testing because they are most like ourselves is the chimpanzee. They are used in different experiments.

Because chimpanzees are more like humans than any other species they are popular subjects for the development of vaccines for prevention of hepatitis B, hepatitis C and onchocerciasis. Chimpanzees are the only nonhuman animal species susceptible to these infections (Prince 115). Animal Activists are against the use of chimpanzees b / c of the decline in the chimpanzee population. In approximately the past ten years the chimpanzee population of Gabon, containing some of the best habitats, was reduced by twenty percent. There is an estimate between four thousand and five thousand chimpanzees that exist worldwide in medical institutions, zoological exhibits, roadside menageries, entertainment compounds and homes of per owners.

In the United States about two thousand of three thousand confined chimpanzees exist in biochemical facilities (Te leki 119). Although chimpanzees are the closest in relation to humans many different animals are used in research. The treatment of these animals is what many activists are concerned about. Animal Rights Activists use a variety of tactics to promote the humane treatment and wellbeing of animals. If not for them no laws would be made to protect animal rights. In the past decade the animal rights movement has taken on a more militant posture.

Some procedures they use range from public demonstrations, media campaigns and boycotts to raids on medical laboratories to liberate research animals, and sending bomb threats. Some of these tactics are in question but many have helped the animal rights cause (Green 204). The number of animals used in cosmetic testing has been significantly reduced and the conditions of laboratory animals used in biomedical research has greatly improved (Leepson 303). Although these tactics have enhanced animal rights, the animal rights movement has long and short term costs on society. The short term costs are that research becomes more expensive while the long term cost is schemes like these may slow research down which in return means human health will suffer and few treatments will be founded (304). Animal testing is very beneficial to both humans and animals.

By doing research on animals, humans may find cures for diseases and new or better ways of performing surgical procedures that may save human and animal lives. The same methods that have been developed to prevent and treat diseases in humans have improved the lives of countless animals. Many of the vaccines, antibiotics, surgical procedures, and other approaches developed for humans using animals are now employed through veterinary medicine. Treatments have been developed specifically for animals in many cases such as vaccines for rabies, canine parvovirus, distemper, and feline leukemia (Press 14). Even with animals advances Animal Rights Activists say other alternatives can be used in place of animals to experiment on but some researchers say that using animals is the only way to see how a substance will react in an entire body system. They say computer models are cell cultures do not provide all the information of how something will react (Masci 679).

Scientists say using animals for testing is expensive and they would rather use computers or other alternatives if they would give them the same or better results but generally mom-animal experiments are alternatives or adjuncts that are usually only useful in determining how something will affect a specific part of the human body (Press 15). Animal testing has improved human living in many ways. Surgical procedures, pain, relievers, psychoactive drugs, medications for blood pressure, insulin, pacemakers, nutrition supplements, organ transplants, treatment for shock trauma and blood disease all have been developed and tested in animals before being used in humans. Virtually every advance in medical science in the twentieth century, from antibiotics and vaccines to antidepressants drugs and organ transplants, has been achieved either directly or indirectly through the use of animals in laboratory experiments, according to the American Medical Association (6).

One such experiment was done on HIV using mice. Researcher recently reported success using mice transplanted with human immune cells to test the efficacy of an AIDS drug. They are hoping this animal model can help assess the potential of various drugs against AIDS. The researchers injected forty mice with HIV and in two weeks they tested the mice with PCR a genetic technique, and HIV showed up in all forty mice.

Then the researchers took seventeen other mice and injected them with zidovudine twenty-four hours before injecting them with the HIV virus and for two weeks immediatly following. After those two weeks the researcher tested some of the seventeen mice with PCR and found no HIV but then they used a more sensitive technique and found a few cells with the HIV virus. It was proven that with the drug zidovudine injected into the mice the HIV virus was less effective in the body. Researchers are hoping that models like this will be useful for drug testing (Fackelmann).

Another success that has been discovered with the help of mice is a treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In one case study Greg Maas discovered that he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer. He underwent chemotherapy followed by a bone marrow transplant to repair the damage done to his immune system. The drugs used in Greg to kill the cancer were tested on mice susceptible to leukemia. There are few side-effects because the mice were genetically identical making it possible to compare compounds (Press 1). Another way animals are helping to contribute to better health is with surgical procedures.

Richard Pothier was diagnosed with a deadly disease that completely destroyed his heart. Had there been no experiments on dogs, sheep or mice he would not be alive today. Mice have been a big help in the development of organ transplants. Researchers were able to study inbred mice with slightly different immune systems and learn that transplanted organs are rejected because of immunological reactions in the host.

This has made it possible to identify the best donor for an organ transplant (Pothier 18). Today thousands of people are alive because of transplanted kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers, bone marrow and other organs and tissues. The issue of animal-to-human organ transplants, or xenografts, another controversy that goes along with animal rights. Animal right groups oppose xenografts under all conditions (Worsnop 711). But Americans refuse to donate enough organs to help others stay alive.

Biomedical engineers are working hard on mechanical replacements for hearts, but the human body does not take kindly to such machines. However anti-rejection drugs can successfully allow animal organs to be used in humans. Xenografts are nearing routine use as bridges to transplantation's. In the future, genetically altered animals may be bred to provide matched organs for dying humans. Of course this many never happen if animal rights activists convince society it is wrong to use pigs, baboons, or monkeys to save a human life (Pothier 18). Besides this being a problem of ethics, animal right groups argue that many times animal-to-human organ transplants fail (Worsnop 711).

But that should be no reason to quit trying. For at least ten years the problems of human-to-human transplants were not solved either (Pothier 18). Another surgical procedure we have because of the tests done on animals is balloon angioplasty. There was a case study of Charolette Evert, an eight week old girl who contract pneumonia. She was successfully treated with antibiotics but during follow up studies, she was found to have hypo plastic artery syndrome. This is a fatal narrowing of the arteries leading from the heart to the lungs.

At twelve months she became one of the hundreds of thousands of people to undergo open heart surgery in the United States. Unfortunatly by age three her heart was again failing, because of excessive pressures required to pump blood to her lungs. A heart-lung transplant was considered but the doctors thought it to be too dangerous because she was only a child. Instead she underwent balloon angioplasty, a treatment of cardiovascular disease.

The procedure was a success and gave Charolette a normal life. Balloon angioplasty was developed in the 1970's using dogs and cadavers. In this procedure a catheter is passed down a narrow artery and when it encounters a narrowing of the arteries the catheter is inflated, widening the vessel. More than two hundred thousand people in the United States receive balloon angioplasty each year for treatment of heart disease to save their lives (Press 2). In the nineteenth century there was little that could be done to treat heart disease because there was no way to repair the heart of a living patient.

Surgeons began experimenting with heart operations on dogs and other animals. By 1923 they successfully repaired a heart valve on a twelve year old girl. Still heart surgery remained limited because there was no way to keep the blood flowing through the body while performing operations so the operations could not take very long. Researchers began to experiment on animals to develop pumps for the hear to use during surgery and by the 1930's the task was accomplished (7). Using animals in laboratories has also helped us to come up with different treatments for illnesses such as depression. As one in two hundred adults do, Gloria Barry sank in to a depression.

She went to a psychiatrist who treated her slightly manic. The psychiatrist then prescribed lithium which is used to treat manic-depression and Gloria quickly returned to her normal self. The effect of lithium, the drug used to help cure Gloria, was discovered in 1994. Research was done on guinea pigs and observed that it h ad a calming effect on them.

Then it was tested on humans and was found that it was a treatment for people suffering from manic-depressive illness. It took another two decades of research on animals befor it gained acceptance. Without this research many people who suffer from manic-depression would never have a treatment for it (Press 2). People clearly want the benefits of animal research. They also want animals to be well treated and to undergo a minimum of pain and distress.

Decisions about animal research should be made based on both reason and values. We should be made based on both reason and values. We should use animals in research in a way that is best going to help us in the future without putting them through more pain than necessary. It would be unfair to halt research given the harm that could accu re future generations. Animals will continue to be essential in combating human illness. Human health has greatly improved over the last one hundred years because of the research done on animals.

We still have much research to do and much to learn on many of the leading disease killers of today such as cancer, atherosclerosis, debates, and other conditions such as strokes, arthritis, and other mental disorders (Press 6). Most Americans except the use of animals in experimentation. Although they might not agree with all the testing that may occur with cosmetics and household cleaners most agree that when it comes to finding cures and vaccines it is important to use them to do research.