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Animal Testing Research Paper

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Spencer Bigelow
15 October 2014
Ethics in a World Context
Professor Traxler
(Title)
The Society of Toxicology, a group of doctors and scientist dedicated to creating a safer and healthier world through the advancement of toxicology, issued this statement recently, “research involving laboratory animals is necessary to ensure and enhance human and animal health and protection of the environment” (citation). Animal testing, a long debated issue, refers to the use of animals in experiments. It is used to assess the effectiveness of everything from medication to cosmetics. As a practice animal testing can be traced back to the 3rd of 4th centuries BCE when Aristotle and others preformed dissections on live animals. Today, approximately 13-25 …show more content…

Veterinary medicine has made great strides in the past decades thanks to the efforts of animal experimentation. Diseases, which would have caused millions of deaths such as rabies, distemper, feline leukemia, infectious hepatitis virus, tetanus, anthrax, and canine parvovirus, have been largely irradiated because of vaccine testing in animals (citation). It is now commonplace in veterinary medicine to use such advanced medical practices as stem cell research, laser therapy and chemotherapy. The practices, let alone the idea to apply them as treatment to animals, would be hindered if it weren’t for the efforts of animal experimentation. Animal experimentation has also been a leading factor in animal conservation and has helped to save a variety of different species including the California condor, Bengal tiger, and bald eagle (citation). In particular, koalas, a newly minted endangered species, have been treated with the chlamydia vaccine in order to prevent the animals’ disappearance …show more content…

Primarily, they believe that animals don’t offer an adequate study system because of the inherent differences on the anatomic, metabolic and cellular levels. Paul Furlong, a professor at Aston University in the UK, declares, "it's very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to achieve in the human," (citation). As such, the success rates on humans of drugs that pass animal testing is far from perfect. During the 1950’s in the United States, thalidomide, a sleeping pill causes over 10,000 birth defects in humans despite the fact that it successfully completed animal testing (citation). While it is true that animal testing isn’t always perfect at predicting the effectiveness of a certain drug’s effect on a human, it is the best option available. For instance, had the thalidomide been tested properly on pregnant animals it would have shown that deformities were prevalent in mice, rats, hamsters, marmosets, baboons, and the New Zealand white rabbit (citation). The success rate of animal testing is also a great misnomer. Thousands of drugs undergo animal testing each year with hundred becoming available on the open market. Inherently, the failures of animal testing such as thalidomide are greatly exaggerated. What go unnoticed are the many successful drugs that wouldn’t be possible without the

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