Why do companies test on animals... where is the logic?

Question

Why do companies test on animals... where is the logic?

Answer 1

To know if the animals are sick, and if safe to eat.

Answer 2

he logic is that animals are the closest things to seeing if study works on humans. Scientists wouldn't dare risk a human's life. I am not saying it's right at all. That's just how they think.

Answer 3

Humans are animals too, and many animals react to certain drugs the same way we do.  We need to test new medicines, but it's considered far more immoral to test it on humans than, say, rats.  We value human life over the life of an animal.  If we had to stop animal testing, 95% of biological progress would come to a halt.  We'd have no way of finding cures for cancer, or AIDS, or developing cures for blocked arteries or finding vaccines for horrible diseases.  More than half our population is alive today because of animal testing - from vaccines that used to kill more than 30% of kids before the age of ten to drugs to help people recover from breast cancer.

Answer 4

they test on animals because they have the same genes as us and they well react the same way we would do when oil or anything is applied to them. but i still think testing on animals is a bad very bad thing.

Answer 5

Hello!!

Companies test on animals because we, humans are also animals. If the drug or the chemical the company worked good on a certain animal, and this is the time when they would experiment it to humans and may come up a useful drug.

:-)

Answer 6

People only do animal testing because it is the *only* way to get certain results.

As an obvious example, if you are wanting to study how certain parts of the brain are important for (for example) memory, or motor function, you can only do this in animals. Wound healing only happens in live animals - so can only be tested in them. Bone remodelling only happens in live animals. *Many* processes can only be studied by doing animal experiments.

For a more detailed breakdown, let's consider a new cancer cure:

Let's say you have discovered a drug which you think kills lung cancer cells (and therefore has the potential to save the lives of millions of people). You test it on lung cancer cells, and it kills them. Great! But what about *normal* lung cells?

You test it on them, and it doesn't kill them. What about *other* cell types?

There are hundreds of thousands of different cell types in the body, and we cannot isolate and grow all of them. So, you might be able to do toxicity tests on a *lot* of them - but you cannot do it on them *all*. The only way is to test the drug on animals.

And what if it doesn't *kill* the cells, but interferes with their function in a hard-to-test-for way (like stops immune cells producing antibodies, or stops nerve cells firing properly)?

Or maybe it is destroyed by the digestive process, so you'll need to inject it or make it into an inhaler. Again, you only get intact digestive systems to test on in live animals.

Or possibly it isn't toxic by itself, but when it enters the body, your liver tries to "detoxify" it and accidenatlly transforms it into a toxin (which actually happens quite often) - you only get functional livers in live animals.

Nobody enjoys hurting animals - so the animals used in experiments are always treated as humanely as possible. If they have to be killed, they are killed painlessly.

Every institution that does animal testing has an ethics committe that needs to give its approval before any tests can be done. They carefully consider the potential benefits against any suffering before giving their approval. And most countries have very strict laws dictating how animals can be housed and treated: all animal testing institutions must abide by these laws.