Should Animals Be Used for Scientific Experimentation?

About Scientific Experimentation on Animals

Animal testing - What is it?

This is probably one of the most controversial topics currently within science, as well as the wider network of media, religious and social communities. Unfortunately even though the moral implications are ethically apparent there is a far more comprehensive substructure that validates the reason for testing on many non-human species. One of the main facts is that many of the cures and vaccines introduced by science each year would not have been possible, had animals not been tested on in some form in the development process of the treatment. Under British law it is stated that, "any new drug used for medicine must be tested on at least two different types of live mammal". This rule is put in place to ensure that the new drug is as least harmful to humans as can be, before hitting the market. However, animal testing has also been used across other industries including household products, agricultural chemicals, pesticides and food, to name a few.

The facts

The testing of animals for beauty care products has been banned in the UK. Research from 2004 stated that in the UK, universities perform most experiments, which accounts to about 40% of animal testing. Next is followed by commercial companies at 37%, charities at 6% and Government departments at 5%.

Your thoughts

Here's how some Student Life message board users felt about the animal testing issue:

• octoparrot posted:
  "Hi, I think it is cruel to use animals as scientific testings but sometimes it is necessary."

• BabeyL0Z posted:
  "Testing for science isn only really acceptable when there are no other options. And it must be done in an humane enviroment, after being tested on inanimate objects. That's my view."

• U12038019 posted:
  "If it wasn't for animal testing then we might not even be alive today. The death rate would be considerably higher, as would child mortality rates."

Pros

• Caroline Richmond, a cancer sufferer was among the first people to have monoclonal antibody therapy which was tested on mice in the 1990s and in her opinion she would certainly not be alive today without animal research.
• All testing involving animals in the United Kingdom is licensed by the Home Office.
• Less than 10 per cent of biomedical research in the UK uses animals.
• In its defence, the pharmaceutical industry estimates that individual medicines now cost 12 per cent less in real terms than they did 10 years ago.
• Research with great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos - was banned in 1998.
• The Medical Research Council applies, "three R's" in funding animal research: a) reducing the number used in study, b) replacing animals in experiments, c) refining tests to minimise suffering.

Cons

• According to Home Office statistics, 2.73 million animals were used in tests in 2002. That was an increase of 110,000 or 4.3 percent on the previous year.
• BUAV estimates 100 million animals are used in testing worldwide. Between 10 million and 11 million were used in the European Union with the UK as the largest user in the EU.
• Animals bred for research but subsequently killed as "surplus" - of which campaigners claim there are millions - are not included in statistics.
• Household products are still tested on animals in Britain today. In the Draize Eye Test, irritants are dripped into the eyes of rabbits.
• The use of primates is the most controversial area of animal testing policy in the UK, with the most commonly used ones being marmosets and macaques.
• This year American scientists injected infected and uninfected macaques with the Simian form of HIV to test the spread of the virus in Africa.

Final thoughts

As of the 23rd October 2008 the scientific advisory committee of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods approved five new tests that do not involve the use of rabbits or mice. Subsequently a full ban is subject to being approved by all members of the board by Summer 2009. Currently all animal testing is done using approximately 20,000 animals a year. One of the animal-free tests involves growing human skin in a lab and utilising it to predict whether certain chemicals will irritate it.

Chief Exec Jan Creamer of the National Anti-vivisection Socialternativesety declared this has been "long overdue - All of those lives are worth saving - I think the only small pocket of resistance will be from a small minority of scientists who are stuck in the mud". This news is of course welcome legislation to animal rights protestors and also signifies a shift in perception of when it is necessary to actually use live animals for the testing of human products. A recent poll showed almost 40% of adults opposed the use of scientific testing on animals, and just recently an 88-year old Joan Court from Cambridge began a two-day protest against brain experiments being conducted on a macaque monkey at Oxford University, synchronising her demonstration with the World Week for Animals in Laboratories.