Animal testing, a necessary evil for scientific advancement or an ethically problematic research method?

Animal testing has played an important role in scientific research and medical advancement, but its ethical issues and effectiveness continue to be debated. We support the 3Rs principle and believe that alternatives are needed to reduce animal sacrifice.

 

Animal testing is any experiment or scientific procedure performed on laboratory animals for scientific purposes, including education, testing, research, and the production of biological products. Globally, an estimated 500 million vertebrates are used as laboratory animals each year. This figure excludes invertebrates. Most laboratory animals are euthanized at the end of their experiments. Laboratory animals are usually bred in large numbers, but some are captured in the wild. Experiments are widely conducted in many places, including universities, hospitals, and farms, as well as pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food companies. Animal testing is used not only for pure research to observe genetic traits, growth processes, and behavior, but also for xenotransplantation, drug testing, and poison testing. Animal testing is controversial because of its ethical issues.
While there have been ongoing calls to reduce unnecessary animal testing and ensure animal rights and welfare, animal testing in various forms still occurs in many fields. Proponents of animal testing argue that medical advances in the 20th century were made possible by animal testing, and that it is necessary because no sophisticated computer can fully understand the interrelationships of molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and their environment.
However, some argue that animal testing is not useful enough to offset the suffering and death of animals. Bioethicist Peter Singer argues that anthropocentrism, which only considers human happiness to be important, is a form of speciesism, which is no different from racism or sexism. I agree with Singer. We sacrifice animals in laboratories for the sole benefit of humans. But ethics aside, there are many scientific reasons to stop animal testing. Chief among them is the fact that the effectiveness of animal testing is equal to, or even inferior to, other tests. It may be more beneficial in terms of scientific fruitfulness to not test on animals. Some people can drink a lot of alcohol and not get drunk, while others get drunk quickly. Because of these differences in how people react to drugs, animal testing requires that different species of animals be tested on the same substance to overcome the differences in human and animal physiology. The methods and dosages used in animal testing are not the same as those used in humans, and since only 1.16% of the 30,000 diseases that humans have are shared by animals, the results of animal testing are not very helpful in understanding humans. In fact, examples of drugs like clioquinol and penicillin that have completely different effects in humans and animals have been used as strong arguments against the legitimacy of animal testing. For example, the antiseptic clioquinol was tested on rats, cats, and dogs, but in 1976 in Japan, 10,000 people who took it suffered blindness, disability, and paralysis, and hundreds died, but because it was tested on animals, it was not initially questioned and was only banned worldwide in 1982. In contrast, penicillin, which causes no side effects in humans, causes limb deformities in rat fetuses. “It’s a good thing we didn’t test on animals,” Fleming is quoted as saying.
The current academic stance on animal testing is summarized by the 3Rs principle. The 3Rs are the replacement of live animals with methods that avoid using them, reduction of the number of animals used to obtain the same amount of data, and refinement of the pain felt by animals through anesthesia. Based on these basic principles, guidelines for animal testing have been established by relevant societies, and it is required that the breeding, management conditions, and experimental methods of animals used in research be described in detail in the paper. In other words, research results obtained through animal testing must be evaluated as justified not only scientifically but also ethically in order to be recognized by the academic community.
Animal testing is ethically problematic because it involves testing on live animals, and the results may not be accurate due to the different reactions to drugs between humans and animals. However, since we can’t conduct clinical trials on humans directly, we have no alternative but to test on animals. That’s why I support the 3Rs principle. However, no matter how useful animal testing is, the future direction of research should be toward eliminating animal sacrifice by finding alternatives to animal testing. Cadaveric studies, experiments with human cells and tissues, and computer simulations, when properly utilized, can provide much more information than animal testing. In recent years, a variety of alternatives to animal testing have been developed, such as using human cells or artificial skin instead of live animals, or using computer modeling to mimic human responses.
An alternative to animal testing is the so-called organ-on-a-chip, developed by the Harvard Wyss Institute in the United States. This is a thumb-sized device that consists of a thin membrane made of human cells and a microchip that pumps a blood-like fluid. So far, there are chips that mimic the contractions of intestinal muscles, and chips that have air sacs and capillary cells that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide like the lungs. In the case of a lung-on-a-chip, it can be infected with a disease or mimic disease conditions. It could even be subjected to complications caused by chemotherapy side effects, such as pulmonary edema. The team is currently conducting further research to create bone marrow, heart, and brain on a chip.
Computer modeling can also be a good alternative to experimental animals. Systems biologists are creating 3D digital maps of the human body that can simulate every tissue and organ with molecular precision. For example, the Center for Systems Biology at the University of Iceland has just completed modeling all the chemical interactions in human metabolism and is working on modeling blood.
In addition, direct experiments on the human body, such as genetic testing, are increasing. This is in line with the development of personalized medicine, which takes into account the fact that the same drug can have different effects on different individuals due to the large differences in DNA between people.
Regardless of these changes, animal testing will remain a scientific necessity for quite some time to come. There are some things, like the eye or the brain, that we can’t fully recreate with any method yet. However, we should continue to conduct our experiments with the 3Rs in mind, and ultimately research alternative methods that don’t require animal sacrifice.