Should People Use Animals to Test the Safety of Medicines?

Do you agree that humans should conduct animal experiments to examine the safety of health products and drugs? The documentary of animal experiments can be dated back to 400 BC in Greece. Galen, a great doctor at that time, used pigs, monkeys, and dogs as his experimental subjects. Until now, the practice of animal experimentation has been significantly improved, but it is still a controversial issue these days. Due to the fact that ruthless experiments appear in many countries, the contention of using laboratory animals has been under extensive discussion. Some people may consider putting animals in laboratory use as unscrupulous and unfair to animals. However, animal experiments are irreplaceable and necessary.

IRREPLACEABLE

First of all, animal experiments cannot be replaced. So far, the computational model is unable to simulate the complicated system in the animal and human body yet. Disease, such as asthma, is a matter of physiological process that requires a whole living body to do the research. The techniques nowadays are still unable to simulate the exact process of the system in animal and human bodies. To follow the principle of 3R in animal experimentation: Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement, most researchers attempt to replace animal testing with the in vitro model, which is the process performed in a test tube. However, there is no in vitro model that could recapitulate every physiological interaction yet. Unless, one day when the technique of a single cell that could be able to represent all the functions is invented, it can take place of animal experiments. Thus, animal testing is still irreplaceable.

NECESSARY

Secondly, the conduction of animal experiments is necessary. Before the drugs or health products get into use, they are all required to undergo a detection process to ensure their safety. Animal testing cannot be forbidden since it is the testing process of excluding the inappropriate or dangerous components inside the drugs. Without the experiments, the medicine will be directly used by humans. Then, humans will be tested in experiments instead of animals, and there is a greater possibility of causing human death when medicines fail. According to the report of 鄭雅淳, 秦咸靜 (2019), a supervisor from the National Applied Research Laboratories of Taiwan, emphasized that the contribution of animal experiments to medicine safety cannot be dismissed because of the death amount of laboratory animals. As a result, animal testing is reasonably required before the medicines are sold to the market and used by patients and customers.

UNETHICAL?

Despite the safety of medicine usage credited to animal testing, some people say that animal experiments are unethical. While this might be true, however, stopping animal experiments is also unethical. If animal testing is banned, those who have health problems with an emergent need for medicine may not receive treatment that is not guaranteed with no possible danger. In addition, according to the research of Dominic Wells (2012) from Royal Veterinary College, UK, the number of animals consumed by humans is much higher than the number of laboratory animals. Wells indicates that 140 billion animals have been caught and killed every year for food, which is about 3000 times the number of research animals used all over the world. As a result, even though many people say that animal testing is not humane and brings ineradicable pains to those laboratory animals, animal experiments are important to medicine production and society.

In conclusion, animal experiments are still irreplaceable and necessary so far. Animal testing cannot truly replicate the physiological system in animal and human bodies, resulting to the fact that the experiments are not replaceable. In addition, the medicines must undergo experiments to guarantee their safety, so animal testing is actually necessary. However, researchers must conduct all the experiments legally and ethically. There might be a day in the future, animal experimentation will be banned. If the technology of alternatives to animal testing is well developed in the near future, animal experiments could be replaced and the researchers do not have to use animals in experimentation anymore.

Reference

鄭雅淳. (2019). 實驗動物與牠們的產地（下）：替代方案，準備好了嗎. Wouwou.

Retrieved from: https://wuo-wuo.com/topics/experiment-animals/experiment-animal-and-their-living/1088-experiment-animals-002

Dominic Wells. (2012). Current ethical issues in animal research. The Physiological Society.

Retrieved from: https://www.physoc.org/magazine-articles/current-ethical-issues-in-animal-research/