Animal Testing

[Makla]

k, this is a class assignment. i need to know your guys's feelins on animal testing.
please try to voice both sides in your argument.

I am for animal testing. i say it is better to test on animals then on people. true, they do eventually test on people, but only once most of the dangers are seen through with animals.
there are millions of medicines that we now have thanks to animal testing. Vaccines, insulin, penecillin, etc. I am personally thankful for these little miracles.

[Akira]

ok i agree and disagree with animal testing
i agree that thanks to it we now have many medicines and what not but i do not agree on them testing things on animals that are not as important and that are not going to save lives.
Ialso believe that if they are going to test on animals they should stick to using rats that have been especially bred for it and that they give them a good life at least until they go sticking needles and stuff in the poor thing.

Ive never really liked the thought of animal testing but i guess i cant just ignore the fact that it has helped save lives

[Aiolos]

Ok, ok. Thanks for the medical discoveries, blah blah.


I HATE animal testing. I HATE it, I LOATH it, and I DESPISE it. Use rats, for pete's sake. One's that are bred for it, and aren't stuffed in a little craphole for all of its morbid lifetime. Animal testing, to me, is just another branch of animal cruelty. One of the main one's, I'd think. There's a rescue center for beagles used for testing, and it just breaks my heart when I hear what their lives had been. What's worse is someone torched the place and killed 95% of them...but that's besides the point.

Here's my input Makla: I hate animal testing.

[vampirehunter42]

Like most things like this I like to see both sides of things.

Pro.............

Animal testing, to a point, is a good thing. Most animals react quicker to tests, and the faster we get cures the better. As well when the apes and monkeys are used we are working with something that is closer to out body make and will react about the same as we do. Normally the testing animals breed faster having larger amount of young. This gives a chance to cut down the time of testing also.

And I have seen pictures and read reports on the darker human testing. And yes humans have been put through deadly test as well. Note: All of the service men who watched atomac bomb tests, were test animals of a sort. They were studied and questioned for the rest of their lives while most of them developed cancer and other problems from the testing. And many other times this has been done with humans. I hate the thought of this being done to people. Do things to animals and see the same things.

And, though not animal testing, anti-venom is created by injecting a horse with the venom of a snake and using the antibodies from its blood to make it. So in that idea where animal testing is good.


Con.....................

I did say "to a point". Once we know what something does we don't need to do it anymore. Also we have to understand the reactions of the body, both human and animal, so with proper equations we have to have a better idea on what will do what.

And we do have the moral idea too. An animal has no choice what will happen to it or not. So I believe human testing is ok as long as they know they are testing a product that will have unknown effects.

And if you watch TV you see this is done. All of these products that give hundreds of dollars of it away free, are testing on the people who get them. They have to report in weekly telling of any and all problems they are having. Have you ever wondered why they have such a long list of things that may happen when you take some "wonder cures"?



Well that is a rant for both sides. I may post again after some more research.

[wut2say]

i really dont like animal testing, i know that it helps and everything, but it just doesnt feel right. i wish there was a way that we could keep advancing without having to test on animals and without endangering other human lives, but i cant think of any ideas. so i understand an dhate it.

[Tempest]

An important thing to know is that most of the “discovery phaseâ€￾ to find a new drug to cure a disease or fight cancer is done using specialized line of cells in a petri dish. Usually, it’s only in the preclinical trial that animals are used (and most of the time it’s on pure-line Little Stuartish white or black mice). Going to other animal like primates, dog or the like is more rare and need to meet a specific purpose since such experiements requires a lot of space and specialized facilities for surgery or other thing like that.

So when animal are used, they usually have a good idea of what the new drug is doing and dog or primate are used more often for long term effects or in cognitive disorders than for preliminary testing.


Now to give my opinion on the subject, I am not for or against either: I just see it as something inevitable in order to discover cures and to advance of fundamental science. For example: Pineal cross-transplantation (you can't try this on humans but not doing so would mean remaining igorant of the reason behind aging and life expectancy).

Note that the regulations concerning lab animals are very strict (at least, around here) and in fact, most lab animals have a much better life than they would in the farming industry or in the wild. Does that alone justify the use of animal in research, probably not. But it helps to put this in perspective.

Also, I wouldn't say that human are a more ennobled lifeform or "special" because this view invites a lot of contradictions (maybe a debate for another time). But in term of longevity, a mouse can live about 2 maybe 3 years, a dog about 10, a human 80. So if testing is needed then doing it on short-lived and small creatures is more practical, more logical and provides much faster results than long-lived creatures. Even if everyone affected by a specific disease would be willing to play the guinea pig (and apparently there is no shortage of such people), it would still be necessary to test on pure-line animals since there is too much genetic variations, different tolerance and different background in human to provide results that can be interpreted accurately.

So yes animal testing is necessary in many cases and more often than not they are well treated. What I deplore is when animal testing is unnecessary such in cosmetics or in experiments that doesn't have a true scientific purpose.

[Corva]

I think that animal testing is nessercery as it has help find drugs that have helped saved lives and stop ones that would just kill people from bieng used. It is NOT nessercery to stick shampoo in the eyes of a rabbit and stuff like that however.