animal testing?

Question

do you know any facts? what's your opinion?

Answer 1

I agree with Garrett. Animal testing and research is NOT cruel, provided that it is conducted properly. I am NOT talking about the idiots who do things like spray hairspray into animals' eyes to see what the effects will be. THAT is NOT legitimate research- and I, like many people, would like to see that type of testing stopped for good.

No, what I am talking about is the research which saves LIVES. This includes research conducted by the nation's colleges and universities, research which is fully supported by the federal government and also by many private groups and foundations. ALL of the institutions which do this must comply with strict anti-cruelty rules and regulations, or they will lose their grant and research funding. Since promotions and tenure in the academic and scientific worlds are based on research instead of teaching skills, no scientist or researcher who is worth his or her salt wants to risk losing grant money because of cruelty in the lab. Indeed, cruelty is an anathema to most of the researchers I know- and I have several relatives who do research and testing at different places around the country. Cruelty is not tolerated by the federal government when it comes to research, and the great majority of private foundations which give grants for research, such as the Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, for example, are equally intolerant of animal cruelty.

Apart from all of this, there is something you should know when you start thinking about whether or not animal testing and research are cruel or not, and it is simply this: without animal testing, virtually NONE of the medicines and vaccines we have today would ever have been developed or discovered. Chief among these are vaccines for things like tetanus, flu, diptheria, polio, measles, smallpox, mumps, whooping cough, as well as for hepatitis, cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, Q fever, dengue fever, and a whole host of other diseases. We can treat and cure malaria because of animal research, and we also have effective treatments for leprosy ( which is mentioned numerous times in the Bible) and tuberculosis, among other things, because of animal research. Drugs developed and discovered that way are also used to prevent and treat heart disease, strokes, cancer, and ulcers. All of the antibiotics and antimicrobials are also tested on animals, and many of them have become huge lifesavers around the world. Even the new generation of retroviral drugs, which are used to treat and extend the lives of AIDS patients, are tested on animals prior to being sold for human use.

But perhaps the most important discovery of all which was made through animal research and testing is that of insulin, which has saved more than a BILLION lives worldwide just by itself. This discovery is one that sticks in the craw of PETA's president, Newkirk, because she herself is a TYPE 1 DIABETIC who would not even be ALIVE if it weren't for animal research and testing !!!! This is a woman who goes around touting how cruel animal testing supposedly is, and yet she BENEFITED GREATLY from animal research, as did millions of other people worldwide. Talk about hypocrisy, will you?

Insulin's discoverers, Drs. Banting and Best, used DOGS as their animal model when they first began to look for a treatment for the disease. Dogs get diabetes too, and so do cats, and the researchers' choice made perfect sense at the time, which was in the early 1920's in Canada. Banting, the senior of the two, named their new discovery insulin because of where it is produced in the body- in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. The discovery won them both a Nobel Prize in medicine, and Banting was later knighted. But the biggest benefit came in the form of millions of lives saved- both human and ANIMAL. Diabetes went from being a certain death sentence ( prior to the discovery of insulin, most diabetics either starved to death, or they died of overwhelming infections,gangrene, or kidney failure) to a serious but managable disease. Nowadays, we use recombiant DNA technology to produce insulin, but that process has only been around for about 20 or so years. Prior to its development in the 80's, insulin came first from cows and then later from hogs. To say or imply that Banting and Best were wrong to use dogs in their research, when so many people have clearly benefited from what they did, is to do them and all of science and medicine an insult. I think that it is this, more so than anything else, which bugs the hell out of Newkirk, PETA's president. She wants to ban ALL animal research and testing, but she can't see that without LEGITIMATE research, life on planet Earth would be impossible for all of us. We need our animal friends- and they often benefit from legitimate research and testing as much as or more than we do. Some of the most important advances in VETERINARY medicine have also come about through animal research and testing. An example of this is the FLV vaccine, which was developed to prevent a deadly form of leukemia in cats. The virus which causes this disease produces symptoms in cats which closely resemble those of AIDS in people, which means that cats were and are a natural animal model for scientists who are working on the AIDS vaccine. The FLV vaccine was developed as a side benefit of this research, and it has saved a lot of cats from certain death. More important, though, are the benefits which have been gained through the research- a new understanding of how the AIDS virus might work, and new techniques for vaccine development.

Sometimes, products developed for animals are modified and used on people- and there are lots of examples of this. One of the most obvious that I can think of is the urine test which is used to detect pregnancy in people. That product was originally developed for use in horses, at the big breeding farms in places like Kentucky and Maryland, and only later was it modified and sold for human diagnostic use. People can also take butazolidin, a pain killer which is commonly used in horses, in small amounts. ( I used to know someone who did exactly this, for a number of years prior to his death.) The list goes on and on.

Animal testing is not all bad- there is a lot of good that comes out of it, good that people like Ingrid Newkirk don't want to admit to when they go around touting their philosophy, which I think is warped at best. There are many of us who depend on the medications and vaccines developed this way to lead normal lives and be healthy- and that is a good thing, not a bad one. Just my thoughts......

Answer 2

I know the FDA requires all human drugs to be tested in at least two different species of animals. The drugs are tested for safety and efficacy (pre-clinical testing). Once it has been determined that the drugs are safe and work on animals they can then be tested on humans (clinical trials).

I think this is better than testing drugs on humans. The animals used in laboratory testing are bred by special breeders just for that purpose. Drug companies do not use animals from animal shelters.

Answer 3

until technology is better... I'd rather them test that new cancer drug on a rat than a human. That doesn't mean I don't think we should strive to one day take the animal out of the equation... but we just aren't that advanced yet... and to save human lives... this type of thing is our best option at this time.

Answer 4

We need some animal testing. It is nutty to be totally against it. PeTA chief Ingrid Newkirk said she is against it even if it finds a cure for AIDS. Millions of human lives would be lost needlessly if anyone heeded such a vile person.

Answer 5

ohg i knwo wayy to many facts and my opinon that it is crule and unneeded one fact i got out of a book was they where putting kittens through surgery to parylize them by putting a weight on their spinal cord adn spraying bunnies in the eyes wiht shampoo adn cutting the mucle of kittins eyes so they can rotate all the way to the back of the head that is crule and mean and pointless i hate it adn if i ever get the chance to go to one of those places i would go punch the idiot that owns it in the face atnd tell him he was a jerk for the pain he causes animalsthere

Answer 6

Animal testing is wrong people should not do it. is now against the law (in some areas) but companies still do it

Answer 7

Well.

We must animal test. Because we can't test on babies!

Answer 8

Animal testing is wrong..period. That be like some weird ailiens abducting us and disecting us to find cures to their diseases.

Answer 9

i DON'T like it myself i think its wrong, just like the thing they did to the mouse not being scared of cats. i think its wrong. the mice had that scenes for a reason they would get eaten!
so why muck around with it
or anything!
its not natural

Answer 10

we had our dog tested and it's about as smart as most folks on yahoo

Answer 11

I think they should test things on criminals on death row.