Do you think animal testing is necessary?

Question

when there are other alternatives?

testing on animals does not mean what happens to them will happen to us. it doesn't make sense.

scientists can very easily use human cells to get more accurate tests.

it's not just wrong, it's cruel.

what is your opinion?

Answer 1

IT'S WRONG.... IT'S CRUEL...... AND IT'S INHUMAN!!!!, animal testing EVEN ON LAB RATS IS CRUEL... CRUEL CRUEL CRUEL!!!!!  they don't have a saying in it, well, how would u feel if u were a harmless little rat minding its own business then someone takes u and shoves a needle in ur head!!!!!!!!!!

YES I AM VERY VERY!!! PROTECTIVE WHEN IT COMES TO ANIMALS!

Answer 2

I think animal testing is horrible! Sometimes people can't even some of the sicknesses! I don't understand why they make poor creatures suffer like that. If they are trying to find a cure why don't they just find somebody who already has the sickness! Its just cruel!

Answer 3

I'm also amidst boycotting animal testing, and so far I'm successful by using expensive products . .

Yes, I also believe it's wrong. Why should we make them suffer while we have faces also (regarding make up)? They don't even use make up, which shows how fake us humans can be. Or use their eyes for shampoo.. Questions, questions.

Answer 4

well for stuff like lab rats its pretty necessarry to test alot of stuff, you know theres many worse things then testing stuff about like cancer on rats then just poisoning them out of your home for no reason

Answer 5

Animal testing is highly regulated.

It can tell us a great deal about how a drug works before it is tested on humans. Cellular testing cannot give long term results for effectiveness or of carcinongenicity.

I have family members and friends that are alive because of drugs that underwent animal testing. Several are cancer survivors that have benfited from recently developed drugs - one is my father.

Animal testing in the cosmetic industry is rare now - too expensive, highly regulated and most ingredients have been previously tested so they don't need to.  

If you want to focus on an issue, look at how food animals are treated.

I am a huge animal person by the way (on the board of a humane society), but not naive.  And learned a lot about current research protocols through school and employment.

EDIT - Don't just drink the PETA Kool-aid.  Go out and learn what is really happening.

Answer 6

I am a huge animal fan and animal testing is not good or sfae to the animlz first of all its killing them if it doesnt go right and then thats partly how animalz get extinct.its soooooooooooo creul and not fair i think that they should test it on themselves and see what happens to them the big cruel idiots who do animalz testing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 7

I think its completely wrong.

we have many other alternatives, and its not necesary to torture innocent animals like we do. i understand that its to save human lives and find cures for diseases and stuff, but why torture animals when we have alternatives?

we do not own everything. animals are not ours to test on. thats just my opinion.

:)

answer mine?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 8

i have to agree with u cause if u compare an animal to a human we are not very different we both have feeling we both can fight back and we both think and also there are many products out there that work for animals and not for humans  

Answer 9

You may be opinionated, but you aren't very smart, are you. Legitimate research which involves animal testing SAVES LIVES- BOTH animal and human. The kind of testing YOU are talking about, which is done by people who want to make a quick buck and could care less about the ethics of what they are doing, is something I too would like to see done away with for good- as would most of the LEGITIMATE researchers and scientists I know, including my own sister, who is one of these people. To someone like her, cruelty of the type you described in your question is an anathema, for numerous reasons, not the LEAST of which is that like all scientists, she relies to a certain extent on government funding to carry out her work. Federal law PROHIBITS researchers from treating animals in a cruel or inhumane manner- and if they violate the law, they stand to lose their funding, pal. Most promotions and tenure in the academic world are tied directly to how much money a person can bring in, and what kind of grants they can secure. Teaching ability takes a back seat to what a person can produce- and it's always been that way, as long as I can remember. Know what this means? It means that someone like my sister can't engage in cruel treatment of research animals without risking her job and her reputation, as well as that of the school and lab she teaches and works at. What applies to her applies to everyone else who does research of any type- and it's why the great majority of legitimate researchers are not cruel. Something else to keep in mind is that scientists who treat animals badly can also face more than just the loss of their funds- they can lose their jobs, and face fines and criminal penalties for cruelty. There have been cases in which researchers have gone to JAIL for it, in fact.

As for the use of human cells, I agree that there are some types of testing which can be done that way- but most of the time, there are limits to this which necessitate the use of animals in addition to human cells. Also, we have laws in this country which prohibit the use of people as test subjects without the consent of the person involved, which means we need to have some other way of studying diseases and treatments for disease. Computers cannot always predict how a particular living being will respond to a given treatment, or what the course of an illness will be in every individual who gets sick. That leaves us with little choice except to use animals as models in the study of disease. Besides, hasn't it ever entered your head that many of the diseases we get as people are also contracted by animals? I can take diabetes as an example. Dogs get diabetes too, and so do cats, and there is strong evidence that the disease also affects members of the primate family which are our closest relatives. Because of this, when the researchers who discovered insulin started their work in the 1920's, they used DOGS as their animal model. These two men, Drs. Fredrick Banting and his research partner, Charles Best, eventually discovered the hormone that Dr. Banting named insulin- he called it that because of the place where it is produced in the body, namely, the Islets of Langhans in the pancreas. This discovery has probably saved upwards of a BILLION LIVES worldwide, and it will continue to do so far into the future. Diabetes has gone from being a death sentence ( which is what it was before insulin was discovered) to a serious but manageable condition. One of the people who has benefited from insulin's discovery is the woman who founded PETA, Ingrid Newkirk. Newkirk is a type I diabetic- that means she needs insulin shots daily to stay alive- and she would not even be here if it were not for the work of these two scientists. THAT'S PETA'S dirty little secret. Newkirk wants to ban ALL animal research and testing, regardless of what kind it is- when she herself would not even be ALIVE but for a hormone which was discovered with the help of our canine friends. If that is not hypocritical, I don't know what is. Banting and Best were HEROES, and deserved every award and accolade they were given ( which included the Nobel Prize in medicine, and a knighthood for Banting) and to imply that they were wrong to use dogs as their model when they did their work ( which was LONG before PETA was ever founded, in fact) is to do them and all of science and medicine an insult.

This example illustrates plainly why I will always support legitimate medical research involving animals. It saves lives, plain and simple. People aren't the only ones who benefit from it, either- there are plenty of examples of how the animals THEMSELVES actually have benefitted from research. Some of the biggest advances in animal medicine have come about this way, such as the vaccine for Feline Leukemia Virus which is now given to cats. FLV is FATAL to cats, and it is easily spread from animal to animal. There is no cure, and very few effective treatments- but thanks to someone who wanted to use cats who had this disease as a model for the study of the AIDS virus, we now have an effective vaccine which will prevent FLV. Cats around the country and around the world have benefitted from it, and the techniques learned during its production have already been applied to research into a vaccine for AIDS. It's hard to argue with results like this- they speak for themselves.

Answer 10

Why don`t you volunteer your self to have the testing done on you..

I see nothing wrong with animal testing...  

Answer 11

It is a fact of life that animal testing is necessary.  You cannot get accurate tests on cell colonies because everything in the body is related, you cannot affect one organ system without affecting others.  There are differences between species to be sure, and the way one drug affects one species is sometimes radically different than how other species would react.  But you CAN extrapolate data from an animal study and apply it to humans, using the results to guide the way human studies are done.  It does make sense to someone with a scientific background.  I cannot explain it to you in a chat post, you'd need at least 2 years of college courses to grasp some of the concepts I'm basing this post on.  The only alternatives to animal testing are to stop research completely, or give untested drugs to humans.  Clinical trials are too small in size to give a full understanding of a new drug's effects.  Anyone who takes a drug in the first 5 years it's on the market is pretty much part of the experiment.  You think there's a lot of commercials on tv now from lawyers wanting to sue pharmaceutical companies because of unknown side effects when the drug came to market?  Eliminate animal testing and those ads would skyrocket, along with human suffering.  I love animals and caring for them is not just a job to me, it is a calling, but human lives will ALWAYS come first.

You can minimize animal testing, and researchers already do that.  But you cannot eliminate it.  That's unrealistic and naive.

I'd also like to add three things: 1) animal research does not automatically mean that an animal will suffer or be killed.  When I went to school there were a colony of Corgis that were being bred to study macular degeneration.  That data DID directly affect treatment of humans with that condition, the dogs were adoped out at the end of the study (average wait to adopt one was over 2 years), and the dogs were also used as teaching subjects for massage therapy.  I got an A because my Corgi fell asleep.  

2) most researchers have a deep and caring bond with the animals in their care.  

3) the housing standards for lab rats at Michigan State University are twice as strict as the housing standards for the human students.

<edit> Nobody pours Clorox down dogs' throats.  If you really believe that, I've got some oceanside property in Kansas I'd like to sell you.  And you know what drinking water is purified with?? CHLORINE!!!!

LOL @ PETA kool aid.  At least I'm not alone in beating my head against this wall.