Animal testing: a necessary part of human progress or a moral boundary crossing?

Animal testing contributes to the treatment of human diseases and the development of new medicines, but it also violates animal rights and ethics. Efforts are needed to find a balance between human progress and animal life.

 

Recent advances in biotechnology have led to the development of a variety of new drugs to help treat human diseases and extend human life, but we don’t often realize that animal testing is behind these advances. We just assume that if it helps us, it’s a good thing, and we use the results. However, animal testing is now increasing rapidly around the world as biotechnology advances. It is said that the number of animals killed in Korea alone exceeds 4 million a year due to animal testing, which is about 10% of the country’s population. Is it natural and justifiable that such a large number of animals are tested and killed for humans?
There is an old saying that humans are the warrant of all things. The 10th Amendment of our Constitution emphasizes the dignity of the people and the right to the pursuit of happiness. The Bible says that God created humans in his own image, and as such, humans seem to be more dignified, superior, superior, and noble than anything else on earth.
Humans have made a distinction between humans and animals. Animals are literally creatures that move. Humans are also moving creatures, but we are not animals, we are human beings. This separation from nature has given humans a superior and exclusive position.
Humans have distinguished themselves from animals based on their unique reason, creativity, language, and culture, giving them superior rights and justification for dominance over animals. However, if you think about it, the justification for humans to distinguish themselves from animals and grant them these superior rights is their high intelligence, which gives them the reason to judge right and wrong, creativity, language, and the accumulation of knowledge through language, which gives them culture.
So what if animals are more intelligent than humans, would humans then recognize that animals are superior to humans? Or, contradicting the above logic, would the status of humans remain as exclusive, superior, and noble as it is now? In the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, the status of humans and monkeys is reversed. The humans are captured by the monkeys and used as subjects for biological experiments. They have only the intelligence and culture of cavemen and can’t speak. The monkeys, on the other hand, are highly intelligent, speak a language, have a glorious culture, and dominate the humans. If we consider that intelligence is the justification for superior rights, it seems natural that monkeys with relatively high intelligence would dominate and have a superior status over humans with lower intelligence. However, people who watch the movie feel sad for the humans and are horrified by the monkeys’ superiority over the humans.
If high intelligence is the basis for claiming superior rights for humans, then people with low intelligence, such as people with mental retardation, should not be guaranteed rights. However, humans guarantee human rights to people with mental retardation because they are human beings. On the other hand, humans should guarantee rights to monkeys with the intelligence of a child, but they don’t, and they don’t consider monkeys with high intelligence to be on an equal footing with humans. This shows that there is a significant contradiction in the basis of justification for human superiority, which means that in reality, humans are not justifying rights and dignity simply on the basis of high intelligence. So where is the basis for this supposed superiority of humans? The basis is in being human itself. Humans believe that they have superior rights over animals simply because they are human. On the surface, this is justified by factors based on our high intelligence, such as reason, language, emotion, and culture, but in reality, we are only looking at and judging the world through the lens of humans.
Since the industrial society, humans have not been able to escape from anthropocentric thinking. We’ve come to think of nature as a tool for human happiness and separate humans from nature. We’ve also come to think of animals as inferior to humans and treat them as such.
Chickens in corporate chicken farms spend their days as machines, craning their necks to eat feed and lay eggs in a space that barely fits their bodies. They live in tiny cages where they can’t move, laying eggs that eventually become chicken for humans. Dogs bred for food live their entire lives in tiny cages, wrapped in furoshiki, beaten with clubs, and eventually put to death in boiling water. Monkeys in laboratories are subjected to drug testing and partially severed brains for humans. In the process, they die painfully from a variety of side effects. Humans give the monkeys used in experiments a noble meaning: they contribute to the development and progress of humanity. But humans are precious, and we cannot dare to treat them so harshly.
How can we justify standing in a position of superiority over animals and treating them at will just because we are human? It’s time to move away from this anthropocentric thinking. It’s time to recognize and accept that humans are part of nature and one of its members. It’s time to protect and respect not only human rights, but also the right to life. Animals, plants, and all of nature have no absolute reason to believe that humans are superior and noble to them. The value of human life, as well as the value of the existence of all things that have life, is noble.
Recently, there has been a global movement away from this anthropocentric thinking and toward protecting and respecting animals. Animal cruelty has become a major global issue, and laws protecting animal rights are being enacted around the world, such as animal protection laws, laws against cruelty to animals, and ethical laws for animal testing. In developed countries, laws were already finalized in the late 80s. The European Union banned the sale of cosmetics made by animal testing.
In Korea, a law on laboratory animals was enacted in 2010 and the Animal Protection Act was passed in 2011. However, the law was passed only a few years ago and there are many imperfections in its implementation. In fact, the law on laboratory animals is difficult to verify facts in closed laboratories, and the punishment for violating the law is only advisory. As such, the protection of laboratory animals through legislation remains opaque and seemingly inadequate.
In Korea alone, about 4 million rats, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys are used in animal testing for human use. With recent advances in biotechnology, the use of laboratory animals has been increasing. Today, animals are still being used and killed to develop drugs for human health, cosmetics for human beauty, and biotechnology for human development.
Humans should not test on animals for human benefit. Some people equate animal testing with eating meat and argue that animal testing is inevitable, just as killing animals for meat is inevitable, but eating meat is a law of nature and the order of the ecosystem. The problem with animal testing is that it sacrifices innocent animals for the sake of excessive human greed and for the sake of an unjustified position of superiority.
Is this sacrifice really necessary for human progress and the protection of life? Animal testing has already reached its limits: animals and humans have fundamental differences in physiology, anatomy, and genetics, and the results of animal experiments cannot be equally applied to humans. The results of experiments on animals, which are fundamentally different organisms, are not guaranteed to be effective in humans. In many cases, new drugs found to be safe in laboratory animals have adverse side effects in humans and are banned. Furthermore, as several recent cases have shown, the results of animal testing are of little value in the final stages of determining whether a new drug should be approved for human use. Scientific analysis has shown that 90% of the adverse effects of current drugs on humans are not seen in animal testing at all. For example, thalidomide, which was developed in the 1960s as an anti-morning sickness drug for pregnant women, showed no abnormalities in laboratory animals, but thousands of pregnant women who took it gave birth to deformed babies with limb defects, and the drug was withdrawn from the market in 1962. As you can see, animal testing is not a necessary part of drug development and can even lead to adverse effects.
If animal testing is truly for the betterment of humans, we need stronger legislation. We need to continue to raise the bar, ensure animal rights, and reduce animal testing. We need to think deeply about the ethics of animal testing and develop a life-centered, not anthropocentric, way of thinking. It’s time to create a world where humans and animals can respect each other and coexist.
I was a member of an animal testing club in high school and developed a negative opinion of animal testing. After entering college and majoring in life sciences, I realized the importance of developing new drugs for human development and disease treatment through various studies. These experiences made me think deeply about the necessity and legitimacy of animal testing. Whenever I encounter these issues, I wonder how to balance human development and animal life. Animal testing is not simply about sacrificing animals for the benefit of humans; it is an issue that needs to be approached carefully for the benefit of both humans and animals.
The debate on the legitimacy of animal testing is never simple, but we must find a balance between human progress and animal rights. We must move toward a future where humans and animals can coexist, respecting animal rights and not just testing for human benefit. This will make our future brighter.