Critical thinking essay part 2

Animal Testing

Animal Testing 4

Animal Testing

Professor

Animal testing is simply the scientific testing where a live animal is forced to go through something that is likely to instill pain in them as well as suffering and lasting harm. For instance, in the United States, approximately twenty-five million animals are used yearly for commercial and scientific testing to develop medical treatments, check the safety of the products that are intended for human use, check the toxicity of the medication and other commercial, biomedical and health care applications. Those that has been involved in animal testing claim that the process has enabled the development of various life-saving treatments on humans and at a point other animals. In this nation, animal testing is regulated by a body known as Federal Animal Welfare. The body facilitates the transportation and housing of the animals that are used for research purposes but it doesn’t facilitate or regulate the experimentation itself.

On one side, using animals for scientific testing and research to do experiments is cruel and insensitive. This is because, animals that are used in research and experiments are usually subjected to excessive and forceful bleeding and are depreciated for food and water. There is also much infliction of burns and other wounds that occur because of a surgery process which instills a lot of pain and can even result to death of that animal. Moreover, we now have other existing alternative testing methods which can be applied to replace the need for animals. For instance, other Vitro testing or testing that is done on human cells or tissue in a petri dish can give the best opportunities to minimize or substitute animal testing.

However, scientists hold some premises or reasons that tend to oppose my opinion and support their animal testing process. They claim that there is no proper or adequate alternative testing on human being’s whole body system. This is because a human being is extremely complex and therefore studying cell structure using a petri dish doesn’t provide the opportunity to study interrelated process taking place in a central nervous system and immune system and only animals can do that. More so, some conditions such as blindness and blood pressure can’t be studied in tissue cultures since human brain has more than one hundred million interconnected nerve cells which even the most powerful supercomputers cannot be in position to accurately stimulate or control its functioning.

The second premise they hold is that animals are best and appropriate when it comes to researches since they are they share similarities with human being in many ways. For example, 99% of Chimpanzees DNA is equal to that of human beings and 98% of mice’s genetics are similar to that of a human being. According to them, all animals and human beings have originated from common ancestors and hence all of them have the same organs that functions in the same way with the support of blood vessels and central nervous systems.

The third premise they hold is that animals are the only option that can be used in situation where ethical considerations prevent the use of human beings or subjects. For instance, when testing some drugs for potential toxicity, it is not reasonable to put the lives of human beings in danger unnecessarily. More so, some experiments involve genetic manipulation which is totally unacceptable to introduce or impose on human beings before testing them on animals.

Concerning their premises and claims, I can see some bits of truth that can be helpful. For instance, it is absolutely true that some medicinal testing are dangerous and even most of doctors and scientists are often not aware if they are fatal, hence imposing them to human subjects for the first time is risk. Therefore, even though we tend to protect animals from this act, at a point we can allow it to happen especially when we do not have any other alternative. This premise can also be true in the sense that most organs and tissues in both animals and human beings such as kidneys, hearts and lungs are almost the same and perform similar functions hence applying them can bring the needed result on board.