Good argument for animal testing

Answer 1

Animal testing. Most people dislike it because of the bad publicity it gets thanks to organisations like PETA. The fact is that without it, many of us wouldn't be alive today, neither would some of our pets. Animal testing has saved so many lives by playing a massive part in creating cures or vaccines for athsma, diabeties, cancer, TB, malaria and so on. Virtually every medical advance (and vetinary) has beeen due to animal testing and the sad thing is that people ignore that, wondering casually why the government hasn't banned it yet. It seems like common sense to dislike animal testing to a person if all that they have heard is what animal right protesters say. However these groups often skate over any positive thing about testing, for instance did you know that cosmetic (make-up) testing is illegal in the UK, the Netherlands and Belguim? That primates only make up 0.001% of animals tested on, and cats and dogs are only 0.5%? That laboritorys are checked on at least 12 times randomly throughout the year to make sure that the high standards of animal care are being kept? Or that animal care standards in labs are often better than shelters, pet stores of farms? Very few people know these things, but once you find out the complete truth, there is no reson to be against animal testing.

93% of animals in tests are under the influence of painkillers/aneasthetics, the rest of the time there is no need for them to be! This means that animals are not "tortured" during supposedly "cruel" tests, but that the tests are done very humanely and if the animal is likely to die at the end of a test it is killed as quickly as possible whilst still under the effects of painkillers/aneasthetics. So the tests are not "cruel".

Another favourite on animal rights protestors (who don't get me wrong, tend to be very nice, good intentioned people), is to say that animal testing doesn't work because of the difference in our bodies and animals bodies. This is true to some extent, we ARE different to animals, but the tests DO work because we also share some similarities with them. So where similarities occur, scientists test safely.

An additional argument against animal testing is that it is unessasary due to technology that can take it's place for a lower budget. What you need to think when you hear this is; Scientists get stress everyday from animal rights groups, if there was an alternative which was cheaper, would they use it? The answer of course is YES! But, unfortunatly, just as you can't lick your elbow, technology isn't that great yet. We live in a world where we expect it to be, but we can't have everything. There are computer methods that can immitate an animals reaction to a drug, but this isn't often reliable and quite frankly would be dangerous if relied on solely to develop and test medicines. Thanks to these machines however, the number of animals in tests has decreased by half in the past 40 years. But it will be a long time before machinery will be able to replace the use of animals in tests completely.

ANIMAL TESTING IS RIGHT AND WRONG

Answer 2

most of the medicines we use on a daily basis, and most of the treatments in hospitals were created through animal testing