Animal Testing Beneficial Essay

Animal Testing: Beneficial to mankind or just plainly immoral? A controversial subject such as animal testing always has strong supporting evidence coming from both sides of the metaphorical “battlefield’’, but is there really a need to choose a side? Is it possible that there is a “right” and a “wrong” argument on this topic? Testing different products (albeit medical or cosmetic) is extremely difficult to do without a suitable test subject, because when testing products for humans it is often times frowned upon when e.g. new medicine for combatting cancer is tested on a live person. Therefore, most of the time our only option is to test on our fellow creatures inhabiting this planet. In September 1838 Charles Darwin published

Sometimes these new medicines that have come from extensive (animal)testing are quite often not safe for human use, one such incident would be in the 1950’s where a new sleeping aid called thalidomide was released for consumers. The drug was tested on a wide variety on animals such as mice, rats, cats and hamsters and worked as it meant to. But as it so happens, when used by pregnant females it caused severe deformities within the fetus and was the cause of over 10 000 infants to be born with severe deformities. After the news of these serious side-effects hit the researchers, the drug was tested on pregnant mice, cats and hamsters and there was no birth defect. When researchers realized this fatal side-effect, it was already too late and the damage was done. This is but one of many cases where an alternative method of research (such as computer programs where digital models of human molecular structures are created and accurate predictions of the toxicity of substances can be made) to animal testing would have been