Animal Testing Personal Reaction/Position Paper

Animal Testing Reaction Animal testing is considered by many to be the most notorious scientific research tool in practice today. It has killed, maimed, and disabled countless animals, and yet this senseless violence continues. Although many people see animal testing as the be-all, end-all of scientific research, it in fact is not. Numerous drugs have passed animal tests and subsequently fail their human clinical trials (“PETA”). Conversely, some drugs fail animal tests but have the potential to pass human clinical trials. Therefore, animal testing should be banned. An acquaintance of mine once told me that if animal testing didn’t exist, drugs would have to be tested on people. That particular fallacy shows how little people know about experimental drugs. There is always going to be a first human trial for a drug made for humans; there’s no getting past it. Since many animal tests are unreliable due to physiological differences from species to species, human trials become more risky than they should be (“PETA”). If animal testing was to be banned, the results of alternative testing methods would be more accurately geared towards curing a disease in humans, not a disease in animals. In addition to the more desirable results aimed at human health, rather than the health of a cat or mouse, alternative methods are more efficient and cost-effective. For example, a research lab called CeeTox “uses human cell-based in vitro (test tube) toxicity screening to test drugs, chemicals, cosmetics, and consumer products” (“PETA”). Another research facility utilizes computer technology to construct a test liver to study chemical breakdown, and yet another forgoes brain dissection and uses human MRI and CT images to study the brain. On that note, psychological research is needlessly cruel in and of itself. The American Psychology Asssociation says that