Animal experimentation in supporting healthcare and medical investigations has been in use since the historical times of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Erasistratus. In contemporary societies, most medical researchers have also adopted animal experimentation to check the viability of a drug before it is used in humans to treat various diseases (Clutton, 1933). For instance, the United States kills about 100 million animals yearly in its laboratory experiments. The most commonly used animals are mice, guinea pigs, fish, monkeys, rats, frogs, dogs, rabbits, and birds. Apart from medical testing, these animals have been used in testing various chemicals and cosmetics for human use. The statistics show that many animals are suffering to save human life (Clutton, 1933). In terms of anatomical orientation, humans and animals, despite all being vertebrates, have very distinct physiological processes and may not have a similar genetic orientation to permit animal experimentation for human drugs, cosmetics, and food before use by humans.
Nevertheless, the overreliance on animals for various experiments also infringes on the ecosystem’s biodiversity. An ecosystem is a self-sustaining unit that comprises all kinds of living organisms and non-living components that must interact for the stability of the environment. Every living organism in the environment plays a vital role in transferring energy, environmental cleaning, and controlling crop pests. A clear target on these animals used for experimentation purposes, therefore, puts both the targeted animals and the fundamental biological components into an extinction threat.
Animal experimentation does not allow for informed consent from the side of the animal. Tests that always use humans as their target specimens allow for the signing of informed consent by the human subject before participating in the research. The main reason for signing an informed consent is to inform the participant about the benefits and risks and to offer more education to the subject before participating in the research. The underlying consent is about the ability of the subject to make their own decision on whether to participate or not (Lewejohann et al. 158). Despite all these ethical considerations for humans who participate in medical research, animals do not enjoy the same informed consent treatment before being used in such experiments. Because animals have no knowledge and may not voice their views about the procedure, the researchers exploit them based on their ignorance. However, despite being unable to speak, animals, too, have feelings and express their opinions about their dissenting opinions. They always do this through a change in play and a need for more cooperation. Most of the time, the partakers of these procedures always ignore their feelings.
Animal tests are not 100% accurate on humans, and the drugs that pass the animal test may not perfectly pass the human trial, even in the first trial. Humans and animals have very different body metabolism, anatomy, and physiology. Drugs, just like food, follow the same metabolic pathways. However, humans and animals have different metabolic pathways, which can prevent the drug from meeting its efficacy and toxicity purposes (Galgut 186). The metabolic pathways also rely on the drug dosage used in animals and humans.
In most cases the animal requires a dosage that is too low compared to the human specimen. The low dosage of the animal subject is because of their low weight and height, which are major healthcare factors considered when delivering medication. The data about the success of animal testing and experimentation may fail to predict human success. Researchers must often offer reliable data and provide more research analysis. Moreover, the choice of the animal target used in the experimentation may not express the evolutionary closeness between the animals and the human genealogy. For instance, a drug that works better in mice may not work perfectly on human subjects during the first trial. Ultimately, a failure of the drug to work in humans after a severe animal trial leads to overexploitation of the animals that, at long last, does not positively change the significant health issues being resolved.
Animal experimentation is a cruel act that does not meet the United Nation’s ethical considerations on the right to life for every living organism. Cruelly killing animals by dissecting them to gain access to their internal body organ is an invasive test that laws leave them dead, causing the extinction of such species from the environment (Galgut 186). For instance, using guinea pigs in animal experimentation by international laboratories has made them non-existent in various ecosystems that hunt them for money. The extinction of the guinea pigs from the environment is a cruel order that limits them from reaching their maximum population and enjoying their diversity. Animals also suffer from deliberate cruelty by infecting them with known harmful diseases, including cancerous infections, which they may not recover from in the long run, even after the completion of the research. Moreover, the researchers constantly expose the animals to a very devastating environment, including a controlled environment that does not offer the freedom to express their feelings and even deny them the right to food.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the arguments mentioned in this essay highlight the need to ban animal experimentation by food, drug, and phrenological scientists. Animals cannot talk and make their own decision through informed consent, making it difficult to have a common ground in supporting the use of animals in such scientific research. Lack of informed consent at some point may also lead to a negative result during a drug test since the change in the animal’s emotions before participating in the procedure may also interfere with the body’s immune response to tithe new antigen. In addition, animal testing is cruel and exposes the animals to human exploration. In most cases, the animal is killed and not given a chance to retrieve back their lives and live everyday life. Instead, their lives are made shorter at the expense of human life. Despite this, most of the animal’s anatomical and physiological components are different from the human counterpart, interfering with the animals for negative reasons.
Works Cited
Clutton, R. E. “An anglocentric history of anaesthetics and analgesics in the refinement of animal experiments.” Animals, vol. 10, no. 10, 2020, p. 1933, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10101933
Galgut, E. “A critique of the cultural defense of animal cruelty.” Journal of Animal Ethics, vol. 9, no. 2, 2019, pp. 184–198, https://doi.org/10.5406/janimalethics.9.2.0184
Lewejohann, L., et al. “Impulse for animal welfare outside the experiment.” Laboratory Animals, vol. 54, no. 2, 2020, pp. 150–158, https://doi.org/10.1177/0023677219891754
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