Benefits of Animal Experimentation
By: Cayela Jao
Introduction
"Exposing healthy humans in disease protocols or to unproven techniques to study diseases or to find effective medical or surgical interventions is universally considered impractical and unethical." (Weibers, web) So what do we do to study diseases, illnesses, and many other negative things affecting both humans and animals now? Our solution, animal experimentation. Animal Experimentation is used to find new diseases, find new techniques, testing medicine, and many more. "To make sure medicine or techniques are safe and effective, they are tested on animals first then applied to humans." (Michigan Society for Medical Research, 3 pages before page 1) There are alternatives, but alternatives have limitations and cannot be used for complicated or new research. Animal experimentation is the only way to learn for some things. Diseases that infect both humans and animals can be treated.
Claim
Animal experimentation is beneficial since it advances medical technology, and we can test if medicine or techniques are safe and effective.
Concession
Animals have also faced cruel methods of research such as vivisection.
concession
Also it is expensive to conduct animal research, not doing animal research will help to save money.
Rebuttal
Even though animal experimentation is cruel at times, it is still the only way to learn new things. Animal experimentation may be expensive but it is still worth it, when alternatives aren't reliable.
Animal experimentation has been a big help in advancing the medial field. Doing research on organisms that are the most similar to humans is the best way to learn new procedures and illnesses without using healthy humans. There are many alternatives such as computers but animal research is needed to create the program itself. It is not possible to create alternatives when you don't have the original information. "Animal researchers are required by law to explore alternatives" (Hunnicut, web), but there are many cases when an alternative is not enough and a real living organism is needed. There are many diseases that affect both animals and humans, studying animals and finding a cure can help find a cure for humans as well. Studying animals has provided valuable information, treatments, cures, and animals can be used to test new procedures.
Why do we use animals in research?
We can also test new techniques and medicines on animals. When new medicines and techniques are developed we do not know if they are safe or effective. To make sure the medicines are safe and effective they are tested on animals before they are applied to humans. Testing new things on alternatives cannot easily replicate what would happen if it were applied to a living organism. Because animals are similar to human beings in many ways testing on animals gives medical researchers a very close or the same result as to what would happen with a human.
Conclusion
Animal experimentation has been a great help in the medical field, providing new information and cures. The medical field is still growing and will continue to grow, animal experimentation can help the medical field to continue growing. There are alternatives and researchers are required to use them, but alternatives cannot perfectly replicate those results. Animal research is needed to obtain the information for alternatives in the first place. "Alternatives can reduce the use of animal testing, but they cannot replace animals altogether."(Hunnicut, web)
Works cited
Michigan Society for Medical Research, "Animals in research; a resource guide", Ann Arbor, Michigan Society for Medical Research, print
Hunnicut, Susan "It is not possible to completely replace animals in medical research", opposing viewpoints in context, Greenhaven Press, web, 2013, 13 feb, 2015