Animals Used For Experiments

Animals Used for Experiments

It’s a very difficult issue, animal experiments are used to develop new medicines and to test the safety of other products, but many of these experiments cause pain to the animals involved or reduce their quality of life in other ways.

Scientists say that banning animal experiments would mean either

• an end to testing new drugs or

• using human beings for all safety tests

There are two positions related to this issue:

Those that are in favour say that experimenting on animals is only acceptable if

• suffering is minimised

• human benefits are gained which could not be obtained by using other methods

The ones against say that experimenting on animals is always unacceptable because

• it causes suffering to animals

• the benefits to human beings are not proven

• these experiments could be produced in other ways

But the thing is, the use of animals in experiments could be really substituted for computer models or other alternative ways?

In fact, the researches for alternative ways are an obligation of every scientist and it is even required by law. However, in some areas and especially human health, alternative methods weren’t found yet, for this reason many animals are still used as experimental models.

There are the three Rs, a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals.

• Reducing the number of animals used in experiments by: (Improving-Sharing)

• Refining the experiment or the way the animals are cared for by: (Using-Better 2x)

• Replacing these kind of tests with alternative techniques such as: (Experimenting on-Using-Studying)

Recently a group of activists invaded Royal Institute, the research center in São Paulo and released 178 dogs that were used in experiments, they said that the Beagles were being mistreated.

The researchers would like to have computer models that could substitute for good these kinds of experiments. Some because of the animal well-being but others, definitely because it would ease a lot the progress of experiments. Whatever the reason is, it’s clear that alternative solutions are everyone’s desire, but we are still far from achieving the ideal situation, the one that doesn’t involve any more animals in laboratory.