Should Animal Experimentation Be Banned?

Should Animal Experimentation Be Banned?

Should Animal Experimentation Be Banned?
For many centuries, the statement: “Physicians already make too many dangerous experiments on man before carefully studying them in animals” (cited in Jerod, 1989) of the famous physiologist Claude Bernard in 1865 is still essential to most scientists. However, animals-right groups argue that animals may not be abused anymore; consequently, animal experimentation, which means testing on animals, have become a controversial issue. In my opinion, animal experimentation should be kept valid for three following reasons.
The initial reason is that animal experimentation is one of the most necessary principles of science work. Before publicizing, new drugs need testing to check for side-effects and how they work on living organisms. Carelessness may cost a life; therefore, scientists use animals, especially short-life and rapid breeding ones such as rats (Wikipedia, 2008).
Moreover, animal experimentation benefits not only human beings but also animals. Veterinary are developed to cure animals’ diseases such as two recent worldwide epidemics: avian influenza (AI) and bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), known as bird flu and mad-cow disease. Statistics of 81,376 BSE cases in the UK between November 1986 and November 2002 (W.H.O, 2002, p113) or 170 AI deaths all over the world (W.H.O, 2007) indicate that the cure is urgent. Thus, laboratory animals are used for the sake of finding treatment.
Finally, animal testing is an irreplaceable method up to now. Thanks to it, a variety of famous life-saving advances such as heart surgery, blood banks or insulin has been found. Also, the fact that “90 percent of genes linked to diseases were the same in mice as in human beings” and “About 1,200 new genes have been discovered in the human because of mouse-human genome comparisons”(Russell, 2002) shows that to continue studies, animals, like mice, will still be mainstays in laboratory.
Opponents of animal...

Similar Essays