Why Animal Testing Should Be Viewed as Beneficial

There has been a lot of controversy about whether or not animal testing is helpful or harmful. Animal testing should be viewed as beneficial. There are so many benefits to animal testing. Research on living animals has been going on ever since at least 500 BC. Many scientific breakthroughs couldn't have happened without animal testing. Testing on animals can be connected to almost every medical breakthrough in the past one hundred years. Animal testing has created the development of many life saving treatments for both animals and humans.

Many people say that there are other ways to test medical and cosmetic products, like in a petri dish. The problem is that the result is not always the same or reliable. Scientist would rather not use a human to do these tests, and animals are as close to the human body scientist can get. Having an organism with the same organs or body functions will determine if the product was successful or not. Petri dishes are useful for surface testing and will not be able to determine if immune systems will react positively or negatively to a product or test. Using animals is more efficient for testing products and vaccines. All mammals share over 90% of DNA with humans.

Animals have an organ system, circulatory system, and a central nervous system that are closely similar to humans. These functions make it easier to do live testing. Because animals are so closely related to humans they can get the same diseases as humans. Animals have systems closely related to humans and they have the same risk of catching a disease. This is why scientists prefer to use animals rather than a petri dish.

Animal testing is done for the benefit of humans, but there are cases where tests have benefited animals. Animals have died from rabies, feline leukemia, distemper, and parvo. If some of these tests were not performed on animals, then millions of animals would have died from these diseases. Animal testing has helped benefit animals and it saved koalas, and the black footed ferret, and other endangered species from extinction. Animals must be used when there is a chance the product or vaccine could potentially kill a human. It is better to use an animals life rather than take away the life of a human.

If we started to use humans and not animals, and the humans ied that would essentially would be murder. It would be unethical. The World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki states that is is better to test on animals first and evaluate whether or not the test could pass the human trial.

There are laws in place to keep animal tests moral. The Animal Welfare Act was passed in 1996. This act made sure animal testing was being supervised. Animals are treated with care and live in temperature controlled environments. Animals also get easy access to food and water. This act also makes a veterinarian check the animals living environments to make sure all required are being met. For accurate results the animals are well taken care of. Animal testing further benefits humans and medicine.