First draft of Animal Testing

Animal Testing

Behind medicines and cosmetics that people are using in everyday life, there are a great number of animals suffering from great pains and itchiness imposed by humans.

 

Fig.1. A rabbit applied cosmetic products in his/her eyes for the Draize test to examine eye irritancy. Photograph by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

 

Today, approximately 100 million of animals are used for Animal Testing around the world (NAVS). Animals are sacrificed for experiments as counterparts of humans and the purposes of these testing can be classified into three main categories―to advance scientific research, to study diseases and develop medicines, and to confirm the safety of chemicals contained in products such as food or cosmetics. Owing to these researches, people could discover effective preventives and treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, polio and hepatitis C. Also the results of animal testing have also been prevented people from facing harmful effects of products (NCB).

It is true that animals can be useful models for studying specific aspects of human biology and diseases and the likely effects of chemicals and medicines in humans. However, many people are ignorant of potential risks of those outcomes experimented upon animals. Also, for the experiment, animals are inflicted with great suffering given by people―for example, they are force to have chemicals which might have toxicity, or they are genetically engineered to have specific diseases which scientists want to study(JAVA). It is obviously what people call animal abuse. In order to conduct more reliable research and to improve treatment of animals involved in Animal Testing for products, Japanese government should obligate companies 1) to promote its treatment according to the principle of “3Rs” (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement)and 2)to improve the availability of information related to Animal Testing.

Animal testing involves two main problems: biological difference between human and animals, and artificial process to make animals ill. First problem, biological difference between human and animals is most common argument against animal testing. According to Japan Anti-Vivisection Association (JAVA), one of the Japanese non-profit organizations against animal experiment, even though human and animals share same DNA to some extents, there are specific differences such as body structure and metabolic activity. JAVA claims that these specific differences greatly affect the results of testing and those results are not reliable enough to apply to human beings. There are a lot of evidences that supports JAVA’s view―For instance, the widely prescribed arthritis painkiller called Vioxx was considered to be safe and even beneficial because of the positive result achieved by animal testing on mice. However, Vioxx was withdrawn from the market around the world in 2004 because it caused heart attacks and strokes to approximately 320,000 people and 140,000 of them have died (MRMC). Another instance is the case of the drug called monoclonal antibody (TGN1412).This drug was tested on monkeys and though to be harmless since it did no harm on monkeys even 500 times the dose were given to them. However, when six human volunteers who participated in the clinical trial were given a dose of the drug, all of them became fatal (BUAV). From these instances, it is obvious that the results gained by animal testing cannot be applied to human because it has possibility to cause harmful side effects on humans. On the other hand, there are many scientists who realized problems caused by specific differences and try to use chimpanzees as a model for human biology because humans and chimpanzees share 98.4 percent of their DNA and almost same creature. However, Andre Menarche, expert of animal testing and former president of Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine in UK, argues that the tiny difference in DNA is huge in terms of biological effects. According to Menarche, chimpanzees are immune to fatal human diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and Malaria.

Artificial process to make animals ill is the second scientific problem of animal testing. According to JAVA, the data of animal testing cannot be applied to humans because humans’ diseases are caused by complicated factors such as living environment, diet, inheritance and stress.