Can Medical Research on Animals be Justified?

Recommend (0) Comments (0)

The Nuremburg Code was written in the 1940’s. Many Jim Crow laws were written around the same time to protect white southerners and we’ve progressed past those laws.

Many high-tech, effective non-animal testing methods exist, and more are waiting to be developed. It’s impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading results with regard to human health, we’d probably be better off if we hadn’t relied on animal testing for so long.

Using any animals for the study of human ailments is deeply problematic because each species and each strain within a species is unique. Metabolism, biochemistry, genetic makeup and expression, and physiology are all different. Though all species share some physiological traits, it is the differences that lead to difficulties in extrapolating research results from animals to humans. Even minor differences in physiology can lead to profound differences in disease pathology, treatment effectiveness and treatment safety.

This is why the former head of the U.S. National Cancer Institute admitted that “the history of cancer research has been the history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.” Other scientists have concluded that, after studying tens of millions of animals, “many of the assumptions driving rat and mouse research do not appear to be valid” and “the problem is we don’t know what the findings really mean. If we are to help people, 3D tissue cultures, genomics/proteomics, pharmacogenetics, imaging techniques, the Hurel biochip, microdosing and other non-animal alternatives must be the way of the future. To learn more about alternatives, see the evidence below.