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David Diaz

English 28

Professor Batty

30 May 2017

Animal Rights or Human Rights?

We all think to ourselves, using someone without their consent is wrong. Henrietta Lacks

was once used as an experiment without her consent and now that we know her story; we know it

is against human morals. Research doctors thought it was okay to not inform patients of the

information regarding their diagnosis or what they were getting treated on. Little did they know

they were getting experimented on. This brings me to the point that it is the same wrongs

towards experimenting on animals. Experimenting on animals has saved lives by helping cure

diseases and disabilities in humans; however millions of animals suffer from medical

experimentation and die. Although animal experimenting has been useful for advancing

medicine, I argue that people should discontinue the experimenting of animals as it is unethical,

bad science and wasteful.

Without permission we are taking animals lives and testing on them. Henrietta Lacks was

once used as an experiment without her consent-exactly what we are doing with animals. The

experiment that was done on her is pretty much what is going on with animals, because the

purpose for experiments is because of a multi-million dollar industry. Regardless of it being a

multi-million dollar industry, they should still not do it without their consent. It all comes down
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to money and trying to sell either medicine or products but even then, animals should have the

same rights just like humans do.

Millions of animals are killed each year to be experimented on for medical research.

While it has helped for some research-it is unethical. Animals have lives, families, and most

importantly feelings just like us humans. They feel pain and animals do suffer from testing. They

have a painful slowly life which then leads to death. The purpose to test on animals is to be able

to use on humans. Most of the experiments that are used on animals does not make it out as it not

safe for humans. Even though animals do not poses rights- they are living things and they should

be protected.

Testing on animals is considered to be bad science because it is basically inapplicable to

humans. According to Aysha Akhtar "Human diseases are typically artificially induced in

animals, but the enormous difficulty of reproducing anything approaching the complexity of

human diseases in animal models limits their usefulness"(Akhtar para7). Even though they inject

the human disease to the test subject they do not always get the same exact disease from the

human. Aysha Akhtar also argues that, "even if considerable congruence were shown between an

animal model and its corresponding human disease, interspecies differences in physiology,

behavior, pharmacokinetics, and genetics would significantly limit the reliability of animal

studies, even after a substantial investment to improve such studies"(Akhtar para9). I agree with

Aysha Akhtar as I believe animals respond to it different because of genetic or biological

differences compared to humans. For instance, a medication or chemical that is being used on an

animal does not get affected by it, but if it is used on a human it can cause harm or vice versa.

They should not be testing medications on animals or even doing things that is not healthy for
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the animals. If they are not healthy for the animals, what makes you believe that those same

chemicals that are being used on animals are going to be healthy for humans? It should be

considered bad science since most of the tests do not usually work or go as planned.

Testing on animals, just wastes lives and it is not as effective as we think. There is now a

humane effective non-animal research method that will help not waste so many animals lives.

According to New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) "in vitro test derived from

cultured human skin cells, was found to be more accurate in identifying chemical skin irritants

than traditional animal tests"(NEAVS para 5). Scientist have developed new ways that are more

accurate, by that we do not waste so many animals lives to get results, that researchers want.

Billions of animals are killed each year in the process. Why still test on animals when you can

just test for a more accurate result and not kill so many innocent animals?

Testing on animals is wrong and needs to be abolished. Animal testing is not only

harmful to animals but to our entire society. It would stop killing animals to waste. Over the

years that technology has advance, humans can test for a better more efficient way. It will save

resources and make our future better for both.

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Resources

AKHTAR, AYSHA. The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation. Ed. TOM L.

BEAUCHAMP and DAVID DeGRAZIA. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24.4

(2015) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/ 1 June 2017.

New England Anti-Vivisection Society Animals in science/alternatives 2017 New England Anti-

Vivisection Society, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.http://www.neavs.org/

alternatives/in-testing . 1 June 2017.