What is your stance on animal testing?

Question

Here are the arguments AGAINST:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/teachers/citizenship_11_14/subject_areas/scientific_development/newsid_3430000/3430187.stm

Here are the arguments FOR:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/teachers/citizenship_11_14/subject_areas/human_rights/newsid_3430000/3430169.stm

What do you think about this contraversial issue?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm totally against it.

I don't think innocent animals should be tested for our benefit. It's mean.

Answer 2

animal testers should go die in h**l

Answer 3

Im absolutely against it i dont understand why we are testing things on rats and rabbits. I recently had a prescription filled and i always read the notes and it says that they are testing anti depressants on animals now...what the h**l

So no i dont buy anything that says tested on animals, we dont eat meat because we think its druel but you think its ok to rub shampoo in the eyes of animals to see if it burns them...ya no thats ok

Answer 4

It is ridiculous and useless in actual scientific study.

I believe all vivisectors deserve a bullet in the head.

Answer 5

Without reading the links, I am opposed animal testing.

After reading the links, I am still opposed to animal testing.

Answer 6

There are no black&white answers. If we could get more human volunteers more animals would be saved from testing, but then you run into the ethics of testing new procedures and drugs on humans.

One NIH study I know of is genetically altering mice in the hopes of curing a major birth defect. Is it more important to protect a few mice, or one in 10,000 unborn children? This study can't be done on human volunteers, or some computer simulatoin.

Answer 7

do not test on animals. its horribly wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats just my opinion though.

Answer 8

It's absolutely appalling what's being done to animals in labs.  In no way do I condone it.  It takes a very twisted individual to devise ways of bolting a computer directly to a cat's brain or feeding poisons to rodents and dogs to see which is more potent.  

I read about one experiment where they put corrosive materials into the eyes of rabbits, and guess what....the eyes were completely eaten away by the acid.  Think about this now though.  They are using a known corrosive material, don't you think they would guess what the outcome would be before even applying it to the rabbits. SICK.

People are overdrugging themselves now, just purely for the fact that pills are so available.  At the sign of a slight headache a person will pop an aspirin; for heartburn, instead of avoiding foods they know give them indigestion, they eat them anyway, and then pop a Tums or Pepto;  For high cholesterol,  instead of going on a cholesterol-free diet, they decide to eat the same exact way they did in the past and just pop the "magic pill".  All of these things cause an animal to suffer.  Heck even using some lotions and makeup causes suffering.

Instead of people taking preventative measures for their health, they let it go downhill and then get a prescription which in turn is from companies testing animals.  

There are already alternatives out there so I'm not sure why companies are still subjecting life to these Frankenstein tests.

One of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain on the subject of vivisection:

"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."

Answer 9

I'm for, and against animal testing.

For one, it needs to exist. For better or for worse, we need something to test on if we're going to make important breakthroughs. However, that doesn't mean we should uselesly abuse animals - putting cleaning products in a rat's eye until it goes blind just to see how dangerous it is to human is absolutely immoral.

Animal testing, in our society, seems to be a necessity, but it should be done to a much smaller extent, and animals should be treated in a humane way.

Answer 10

I do not like animal testing. There are other ways of testing products without harming a living breathing creature. Its as simple as that.

Answer 11

Im against it. It hurts my heart to think of what helpless animals go through.....

Answer 12

I think there needs to be better standards for this stuff.  If they are testing things that will truly benefit mankind, I'm OK with some testing.  If you are just torturing animals to find out if the mascara is irritating, you need to be irritated yourself and find out how it feels.

Answer 13

http://www.veggieromance.com/f/59432 visit this link for some very good information about animal testing.

Apres vous, superb answer.  I am against animal testing because it endangers human lives and because of the torture/burning/slicing open/force feeding/abuse that the innocent animals have to endure.

UNSEEN THEY SUFFER

UNHEARD THEY CRY

IN AGONY THEY LINGER

IN LONELINESS THEY DIE.

1. Benzene was not withdrawn from use as an industrial chemical despite clinical and epidemological evidence that exposure caused leukemia in humans, because manufacturer-supported tests failed to reproduce leukemia in mice.

2. Smoking was thought to be non-carcinogenic because smoking-related cancer is difficult to reproduce in lab animals. Consequently many continued to smoke and to die from cancer.

3. Animal experiments on rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, monkeys, and baboons revealed no link between glass fibers and cancer. Not until 1991, due to human studies, did OSHA label it carcinogenic.

4. Though arsenic was a known human carcinogen for decades, scientists still found little evidence in animals to support the conclusion as late as 1977.[6] This was the accepted view until it was eventually possible to produce in animals.

5. Many humans continued to be exposed to asbestos and die because scientists could not reproduce the cancer in laboratory animals.

6. Pacemakers and heart valves were delayed in development because of physiological differences between animals on which they were designed and humans for whom they were intended.

7. Animal models of heart disease failed to show that a high cholesterol/high fat diet increases the risk of coronary artery disease. Instead of changing their eating habits to prevent the disease, people continued their lifestyles with a false sense of security.

8. Patients received medications that were harmful and/or ineffective due to animal models of stroke.

9. Animal studies predicted that beta-blockers would not lower blood pressure. This withheld their development. Even animal experimenters admitted the failure of animal models of hypertension in this regard, but in the meantime, there were thousands more stroke victims.

10. Surgeons thought they had perfected radial keratotomy, surgery performed to enable better vision without glasses, on rabbits, but the procedure blinded the first human patients (The rabbit cornea is able to regenerate on the underside, whereas the human cornea can only regenerate on the surface). Surgery is now performed only on the surface.

11. Combined heart lung transplants were supposedly 'perfected' on animals, but the first 3 human patients all died within 23 days. Of the 28 patients operated on between 1981 and 1985, 8 died peri-operatively, and 10 developed obliterative bronchiolitis, a lung complication that the dogs on whom experiments had been conducted did not develop. Of those 10 humans who developed obliterative bronchiolitis, 4 died and 3 never breathed again without the aid of a respirator. Obliterative bronchiolitis turned out to be the most important risk of the operation.

12. Cyclosporin A inhibits organ rejection, and its development was a watershed in the success of transplant operations. Had human evidence not overwhelmed unpromising evidence from animals, it would never have been released.

13. Animal experiments failed to predict the kidney toxicity of the general anesthetic methoxyflurane. Many people lost all kidney function.

14. Animal experiments delayed the use of muscle relaxants during general anesthesia.

15. Research on animals failed to reveal bacteria as a cause of ulcers and delayed treating ulcers with antibiotics.

16. More than half of the 198 new medications released between 1976 and 1985 were either withdrawn or relabeled secondary to severe unpredicted side effects.[16] These side effects included complications such as lethal dysrhythmias, heart attacks, kidney failure, seizures, respiratory arrest, liver failure, and stroke, among others.

17. Flosint, an arthritis medication, was tested on rats, monkeys and dogs; all tolerated the medication well. However, in humans it caused deaths.

18. Zelmid, an antidepressant, was tested on rats and dogs without incident, but it caused severe neurological problems in humans.

19. Nomifensine, another antidepressant, was linked to kidney and liver failure, anemia, and death in humans. And yet animal testing had indicated that it could be used without side-effects occurring.

20. Amrinone, a medication used for heart failure, was tested on numerous animals and was released without any trepidation. But humans developed thrombocytopenia, a lack of the type of blood cells that are needed for clotting.

21. Fialuridine, an antiviral medication, caused liver damage in 7 out of 15 people. 5 eventually died and 2 more needed liver transplants. And yet it had worked well in woodchucks.

22. Clioquinol, an antidiarrheal, passed tests in rats, cats, dogs and rabbits. But it had to be withdrawn all over the world in 1982 after it was found to cause blindness and paralysis in humans.**

23. Eraldin, a medication for heart disease, caused deaths and blindness in humans despite the fact that no untoward effects could be shown in animals. When introduced, scientists said it noted for the thoroughness of the toxicity studies on animals. Afterwards, scientists were unable to reproduce these results in animals.

24. Opren, an arthritis medication, killed 61 people. Over 3500 cases of severe reactions have been documented. Opren had been tested on monkeys and other animals without problems.

25. Zomax, another arthritis drug, was responsible for the death of 14 people and causing suffering to many more.

26. The dose of isoproterenol, a medication used to treat asthma, was calculated in animals. Unfortunately, it was much too toxic for humans. 3500 asthmatics died in Great Britain alone due to overdose. It is still difficult to reproduce these results in animals.

27. Methysergide, a medication used to treat headaches, led to retroperitoneal fibrosis, or severe scarring of the heart, kidneys, and blood vessels in the abdomen. Scientists have been unable to reproduce this in animals.

28. Suprofen, an arthritis drug, was withdrawn from the market when patients suffered kidney toxicity. Prior to its release researchers had this to say about the animal tests: '...excellent safety profile. No...cardiac, renal, or CNS [central nervous system] effects in any species'.

29. Surgam, another arthritis drug, was designed to have a stomach protection factor that would prevent stomach ulcers, a common side effect of many arthritis drugs. Although promising in lab animal tests, ulcers occurred in human trials.

30. Selacryn, a diuretic, was thoroughly tested on animals, but it was withdrawn in 1979 after 24 people died from drug induced liver failure.

31. Perhexiline, a heart medication, was withdrawn when it produced liver failure which had not been predicted by animal testing. Even when the particular type of liver failure was known, it could not be induced in animals. Domperidone, designed as a treatment for nausea and vomiting, made human hearts beat irregularly and had to be withdrawn. Scientists were unable to reproduce this in dogs even with 70 times the normal dose.

33. Mitoxantrone, a treatment for cancer produced heart failure in humans. It was extensively tested on dogs, which did not manifest this effect.

34. Carbenoxalone was supposed to prevent formation of gastric ulcers but caused people to retain water to the point of heart failure. After vivisectors knew what it did to humans they tested it on rats, mice, monkeys, rabbits, but could not reproducing this effect.

35. Clindamycin, an antibiotic, causes a bowel condition called pseudomenbraneous colitis. And yet it was tested in rats and dogs every day for a year; moreover, they were able to tolerate doses ten times greater than humans are able to.

36. Animal experiments did not support the efficacy of valium-type drugs during development or subsequently

37. The pharmaceutical companies Pharmacia and Upjohn discontinued clinical tests of its Linomide (roquinimex) tablets for the treatment of multiple sclerosis after several patients suffered heart attacks. Of 1,200 patients, 8 suffered heart attacks as a result of taking the medication. Animal experiments had not predicted this.

38. Cylert (pemoline), a medication used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, caused liver failure in 13 children. Eleven either died or required a liver transplant.

39. Eldepryl (selegiline), a medication used to treat Parkinson's disease, was found to induce very high blood pressure. This side effect has not been seen in animals.

40. The diet drug combination of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine was linked to heart valve abnormalities and withdrawn although animal studies had never revealed heart abnormalities.

41. The diabetes medication troglitazone, better known as Rezulin, was tested on animals without significant problems, but caused liver damage in humans. The manufacturer admitted that at least one patient had died and another had to undergo a liver transplant as a result.

42. The plant digitalis has been used for centuries to treat heart disorders. However, clinical trials of the digitalis-derived drug were delayed because it caused high blood pressure in animals. Fortunately, human evidence overrode and as a result, digoxin, an analogue of digitalis, has saved countless lives. Many more people could have survived had the animal testing been ignored and digitalis been released earlier.

43. FK 506, now called Tacrolimus, is an anti-rejection agent that was almost abandoned before proceeding to clinical trials due to severe toxicity in animals. Animal studies suggested that the combination of FK 506 with cyclosporin might prove more  

Answer 14

I'm TOTALLY AGAINST IT. Great answers Apres Vous and Fluffycat.