I'm doing this debate for class, and my topic is 'Should animals be tested on'. I got chosen to be FOR it.

Question

I have to write a persuasive paper, too.
I need help.

Possibly websites?
Or good reason's to be FOR it?
Throw anything at me!

And please don't come If you're going to bash other's and say Animal science is completely horrible. This is for a project, I just need some help.
Thank you's.

Answer 1

Animal testing SAVES LIVES, both human and animal. Medicine and medical procedures need to be tested to know if they benefit or harm. While some studies can look at the cellular response to a stimulus, others need to know what the effect is on the body. Whole body systems need to be looked at as well, if a medication cures cancer but destroys brain tissue, its not a good medication. Also, Humans make for bad models for initial stages because they are 1. are expensive to care for 2. are large and take up a lot of space and 3. it is difficult to maintain independent samples in a group of humans (Think of trying to create an experiment where you need to test on 100 humans while controlling for food and water intake and not let them come into contact with disease vectors, including other humans. For humans this would require an entire building and a large staff for one experiment while the same conditions may be met for mice in a corner of a room). Many times we need to know what will happen to the animal as it ages. Mice have a life span of 1-2 years while you would need to wait 75+ years to collect the same data on a human. Information gathered helps other animals as well. All of the medications and medical procedures given to pets were tested on animals.

Animal testing is regulated. A project should not repeat the work already done and should use the fewest number of animals possible. Also, the type of animal needs to be justified. Why use a monkey when a rabbit should give you the same response. More complex animals that need social contact are used when necessary. The welfare of the animals used is also regulated. Primates must receive enrichment every day and dogs must be provided ample room for exercise (Animal Welfare Act).

In most cases, the animals used in research are breed for research. We are not going to cause extinction of animals used in laboratories because of the research. The most common animals used are strains of mice and rats developed for animal research.

Benefits of animal testing- immunizations, cancer therapy, surgery, over the counter medications, and care of premature infants.

As for websites, you look up American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS), Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC International).

Answer 2

Not really sure what website you would want to go to other than the big name pharmaceutical companies and AALAS (American Association for Laboratory Animal Science).

There are many more reasons to be for biomedical and product testing than to be against it.

For example, would you use contact cleaning soluntion without knowing if it will harm your eyes and blind you? Would you use household cleaners if they were toxic and caused brain damage? Would you use shampoo if you didn't know if your hair would fall out because of it?

Of course the answers are all no. Products need to be tested in order to be approved for human use and consumption. But the good news is once a particular compound has been tested and passed, it doesn't need to be tested again. Same with a mixture of compounds. As long as the "recipe" for that compound mixture hasn't changed, it is still legal and needs no further testing.

Then there is the whole biomedical aspect of laboratory animal testing. All of our vaccines have been developed and tested in living animal models. Cancer therapies are being developed and tested on animals. If you can get it in pill, injectible, nasal spray, eye drop, suppository or topical form, it has been tested on animals. Modern medicine would not be where it is today if not for humane controlled animal testing.

And to put a zinger on the project, you can pose the same question a professor of mine did almost 10 years ago now. He asked us if we had a chance to try a new personal hygiene product on a mouse, a dog or our mothers, which would we choose and why. It really does put things into perspective. No one ever really cries over the death of say 100,000 mice, and the death of 100 dogs is sad but not so sad that life as you know it will end. But if a product was put on the market that killed your mother, you would be outraged. Even though lower chordates and invertebrates have the same right to life and right to quality of life as we do (as in living relatively pain free), very very few people actually value a mouse's life over a human's.

Answer 3

Many animals can be used as models for humans in experimentation.

Some animals suffer the same diseases as humans, so drugs can be tested on them for that reason.
All testing on animals must go through ethical committees to show that they are not cruel in experimentation, although some pain cannot be avoided.
Some testing does not have any alternative method (say, cells on slides etc).
The Food and Drug Administration requires animal testing before human trials.

Those who oppose animal testing will try to highlight shampoo testing on animal eyes etc, this has largely been eliminated through cell reactivity on slides etc.
Many animals are bred solely for these purposes, and are kept in controlled environments, so experiments cannot "escape" into the wider community. You can, for instance, if you are in the field, order a pregnant rat suffering from a genetic disease, like you would buy a litre of alcohol to use in the laboratory.
Also, the more emotional experiments on monkeys, where they induce psychoses using drugs can be used to show that many of these drugs were modified and made safer for human use due to these experiments, as cruel as they may seem.
In debating, try to work out the arguments for the other side, and then work out how to argue against them.

Answer 4

Basically the argument to use animals for research is that it would be too costly and too dangerous to conduct basic research on humans. That is, in the early stags of research, a lot of the work is hit and miss, and you need a lot of subjects because frankly a lot of them could die or be seriously injured. True, this causes sufering in the test animals, and it is the ethical obligation of the researcher to immediately euthanize (humanely kill by CO or other painless method) the animal.

If you use humans for this purpose you end up killing a lot of people, and as a society we have collectively decided that this isn't acceptable, thoug from time to time some very evil people do get away with it for awile (e.g. Dr. Mengele ,etc.).

The other alternative is to simply not do any biological or medical research, which basically means that we can longer longer look for and test potential cures for many diseases. Thus, if we want to continue finding new ways to treat disease, we have to be able to conduct medical research on animals, and that will lead to the death and injury of many of these animals. As a society, we find this alternative acceptable ,so long as the suffer of the animals is minimized, and it normally is.

Answer 5

The overwhelming argument FOR conducting research on animals is the potential saving of human life and easing suffering for both humans and animals that benefit from the medical breakthroughs that can be discovered through the research.

To help you present an argument with some ethics behind it, you might want to check the bio-ethics links from this U of Minnesota website: http://www.research.umn.edu/ethics/links/

Answer 6

you chose to be for it before having a good reason?
SHAME

here is one reason: dogs cant scream

here is another:

because we are so closely related to other mammals, the enzymes in our bodies are very much similiar, and in some cases function identically. Drugs act on enzymes, by inhibition or activation, thus if the animal has complications, we too will likey have complications. Since the chemistry of life is so complicated, the only way to know for sure if a drug is safe, is to test it on a life form.

Answer 7

Just say stuff, like:
Monkey's can be replaced, humans cannot.
If test's are done on animal's then the result's can be made
more safe for human's.
If we did not have them then drug products would be much more
dangerous on human's.
Not saying I support it, I HATE IT- but here's what I got.

Answer 8

Wow. That is a really weird coincidence. I am in exactly the same situation, but as far as I know, I don't have to write a paper. Good luck with that.

Answer 9

If it wasn't for animals, we would not have modern medicine. In drug trials, new medicines are tried on animals first to make sure they are not toxic, then human drug trials start. Good Luck with this paper.

Answer 10

poor girl, would love to help you but i cant think of anything that would be FOR it. sorry, i tried to look some sites up for you (german and norwegian) but no way, ray!

only idea: try to find some reports from cosmetic companies ...