The Ethic of Animal Experimentation
The Ethic of Animal Experimentation
Josie Giles
Union High School
Author Note
Josie N. Giles, Freshman at Union High School.
Josie participates in Travel and Art Club
Abstract
Every day, millions and millions of mice, dogs, cats, rabbits, die as a result of animal testing. Testing on animals should be eliminated for various reasons. The first and main reason is that animal testing is cruel. The second reason is that there is no real advantage to animal testing because they are not homologous to humans. The third and last reason is that there are other methods widely available that do not involve cruel treatment to animals.
As a result, animal testing is cruel and causes stress to the animals. They are put in cages and poked and prodded throughout the day. While animals are not by any means as smart as the human race, they are proven to have intelligence. Many animals can be trained and exhibit behavior that shows they feel emotion, pain, loneliness, fear, and stress. It should be obvious that keeping animals in lonely cages all day and forcing them to undergo painful testing would cause them stress. Animals should be allowed to run free and experience the normal animal activity that they were born to experience. They may not be able to speak and express themselves in words, but they do have intelligence and thus their rights must be protected by eliminating unnecessary animal testing.
Aside from the cruelty of animal testing, there is no real advantage to test on animals rather than alternative methods. Animal anatomy is similar but not homologous to human anatomy. Therefore, testing on animals provides no real results for human study. The human body is much more complex than that of a mouse or any other animal. As mammals, humans share the same body systems with other mammalian animals; however, this does not equate...
