Kalina Gibson

Red Group

Critical Thinking Paper-Animal Testing

Kalina Gibson
5/10/15
Dr. Simel
Red Group

Kalina Gibson
Red Group

Each year, an estimated 100 million animals are killed in United States
laboratories for medical training, biology lessons, curiosity-driven experiments, and other
biomedical, chemical, and human health care reasons (Collins). The United States
government must pass a law banning all forms of animal testing, because animal testing
is a cruel and inhumane process, it is an unreliable source to determine a human response
to a vaccine, and is increasingly more expensive than alternative methods.
The use of animals for scientific research dates back as early as the ancient
Greeks and Romans. Vivisection has been a long-practiced form of animal
experimentation. Vivisection used to be performed on criminals in ancient Rome but,
restrictions on the mutilation of the human body were enforced, and animals were used
instead. Aristotle believed that animals were classified below mankind and because they
lacked intelligence, concepts of injustice and justice didnt apply to them. Aristotles
pupil, Theophrastus, disagreed. He refused to practice vivisection on animals because he
claimed that the animals could feel pain like humans, and claimed the practice was an
offense to the gods. Although animal testing had been around for a very long time, there
was no real objection to it until the early nineteenth century. Animal rights and morality
toward animals gained momentum in Victorian England. Queen Victoria was a strong
advocate for animal rights and in 1876, Parliament passed the Cruelty to Animals Act. In
1959, W.M.S. Russell and R.L. Burch published The Principles of Humane Experimental
Technique. Their work established the Three Rs which are the guiding principles for
ethical use of animals in testing. They are, Reduction, use fewer animals in experiments;
replacement, the use of non-animal alternatives over animals whenever possible; and

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refinement, use techniques to alleviate or minimize the invasive procedures that could
potentially cause pain, suffering or distress, and to the enhancement of animal welfare for
the animals still used. (ProQuest Staff). The Three Rs were not given much
recognition at the time they were published, but they are now incorporated in the U.S.
Animal Welfare Act (1966) and have formed the foundation of many international animal
welfare laws.
Animal testing in the United States is regulated under the federal Animal Welfare
Act (AWA). The AWA defines an "animal" as "any live or dead dog, cat, monkey, guinea
pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm-blooded animal (procon.org, Animal Testing).
The AWA excludes birds, rats, mice, cold-blooded animals, and farm animals. The
movement against animal testing was revitalized in 1981, when an undercover activist for
People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) captured photos of primates engaging in
self-mutilation due to stress at the Institute for Biological Research in Silver Spring, MD.
The laboratory director, Edward Tabb, was charged with more than a dozen animal
cruelty offences, and an especially notorious photo of a monkey in a harness with all four
limbs restrained became a symbolic image for the animal rights movement (Engber). In
2001, a controversy erupted surrounding veterinarian Dr. Michael Podell at Ohio State
University. Podell was infecting cats with AIDS to study the effects when administered
with methamphetamine. Podell left his project after receiving letters from angry animal
rights activists who claimed that he was committing despicable torture and murdera
cat killer (Stolberg). In June 2013 the Unites States National Institute of Health (NIH)
announced that it would be retiring most of its chimpanzees over the following years.
NIH Director Francis Collins said that the chimpanzees were being released because,

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new scientific methods and technologies have rendered their use in research largely
unnecessary After extensive consideration with the expert guidance of many, I am
confident that greatly reducing their use in biomedical research is scientifically sound and
the right thing to do (Collins, sirs.com). The U.S. and Gabon remain the only countries
still using chimpanzees in biomedical testing. Although there have been large successes
in stopping animal testing in the U.S. there is still much to do.
A large reason the United States government must prohibit animal testing is
because it is a cruel and inhumane practice. The tests inflict physical pain as well as
psychological distress and suffering. In 2008, an investigator for the Humane Society of
the United States worked undercover at one of the worlds largest primate research
facilities, the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana. The AWA states that
research facilities have to account for the psychological well being of primates, but at this
facility the investigator documented hundreds of violations against the law. The major
finding of the investigation was the severe psychological distress the animals went
through on a daily basis. The chimpanzees were subjected to severe distress from the fear
of being shot with a sedation dart gun, then going through the pain of being hit and
falling to the cement ground beneath them. When there was protocol against using
sedation, monkeys were yanked from their cages and forced into restraint chairs. There
was evidence of physical pain from observed self-mutilation but the larger issue was the
psychological torment. The animals were isolated, kept away from others who could give
them companionship, and kept in cages with the constant fear of being experimented on.
More psychological distress was caused when newborns were forcefully taken from their
mothers and experimented on while still awake and alert. There was one chimpanzee that

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was permanently removed from research because it was found to have stress induced
psychosis. From the footage captured by the investigator, it was found that approximately
twenty chimpanzees were used for the research, while nearly 300 others were
warehoused in prison-like settings for not just a few months, but decades. According to
the Humane Society International (HSI), animals used in experiments are commonly
subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged
periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing
process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and killing by carbon
dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means (hsi.org, About
Animal Testing). These methods are cruel and must stop because no living thing deserves
to experience that kind of pain.
Another reason the U.S. government should ban animal testing is because the tests
cannot reliably predict a human response to a cure, drug, or vaccine. On average, 94%
of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials (Lovell-Badge). A 2013 study
published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America (PNAS) found that, nearly 150 clinical trials [human tests] of treatments to
reduce inflammation in critically ill patients have been undertaken, and all of them failed,
despite being successful in animal tests (procon.org, Animal Testing). The test subjects
of that experiment experienced horrible inflammation and intense pain. According to
reporter John Ericson, The most obvious problem [with animal testing] is the
fundamental biological difference between humans and the animals used in research
side effects are missed, and millions of dollars are wasted a new chemical entity only
has an 8 percent chance of being approved for human use (Ericson). Even many years

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ago people had doubts about the reliability of animal testing. In 1655 Edmund O Meara
said, the miserable torture of vivisection places the body in an unnatural state (Ryder).
O'Meara and others argued that animal physiology could be affected by pain during
testing, rendering results unreliable. In truth, animal testing cannot reliably predict a
human response to a drug or vaccine because even though there are similarities between
their bodies, they are certainly not identical.
The U.S. government should ban animal testing because animal tests are
increasingly more expensive than alternative methods. The United States National
Institute of Health spends fourteen billion of its thirty-one billion dollar annual budget on
animal tests. All of that money, which includes taxpayers dollars, is wasted every year
because only eight percent of the drugs tested on animals succeed. Then there are the
actual tests themselves. A genetic toxicity test, the sister chromatid exchange, costs
$22,000 when tested on a mouse. In contrast, when tested, with an in vitro test it costs
only $8,000 (hsi.org, Costs of Animal and Non-Animal Testing). In vitro tests, or in
glass tests, study cell cultures in a Petri dish, and they produce more accurate results
than an animal test because human cells are used. Another example is the rat uterotrophic
assay test; it costs $29,600, while the in vitro equivalent costs $7,200. The rat
Hershberger assay test costs $37,700, while its in vitro equivalent costs $7,300. Finally a
non-genotoxic cancer risk test, the animal test costs $700,000 while the in vitro test costs
only $22,000. In vitro tests arent the only methods that dont require animals. One
method, in the advanced stage of development, is microfluidic chips, also referred to as
organs on a chip. These chips are lined with human cells and can recreate the functions
of human organs. Another method is computer models, such as, virtual reconstructions

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of human molecular structures that can predict the toxicity of substances without
invasive experiments on animals (Watts). The United States government should stop
funding animal tests and invest in in vitro tests and other methods that dont use animals
because they are more reliable, less expensive, and do not waste innocent lives.
In conclusion, the United States government must pass a law banning animal
testing as a way to come up with a cure, vaccine, or drug for a disease. Animal testing is
cruel, it is an unreliable source for discovering a human reaction, and it is much more
expensive than alternative methods that have proven to be more reliable.