Is animal testing a necessary part of treating human diseases, or are there alternatives?

Animal testing has made some contributions to the treatment of disease, but it is inefficient, unethical, and should be banned because alternative methods exist.

 

People get hurt, people get sick, and people live. But this doesn’t happen because people want it to. Most people would like to live a full life without disease, and while a world without disease would be better, if it were unavoidable, we would live with it and try to cure it. We don’t have a panacea for all diseases. Most diseases can be treated with the right medicine or surgery. However, when new diseases or viruses appear, we don’t know if existing drugs or surgeries will help treat them. That’s why animal testing is currently practiced.
Animal testing is any experiment or scientific procedure performed on laboratory animals for scientific purposes, such as education, testing, research, and the production of biological products. The earliest records of animal testing were found in Greek literature in the 4th century BC. Later, in the 12th century, an Arab surgeon named Abenzoar vivisected animals as a way to test treatments on them before using them on other people. Thus, animal testing began to help cure human diseases, and it is arguably the most influential factor in the development of 20th century medicine. From this perspective, animal testing may be necessary.
However, if you think about it from the perspective of the original purpose of animal testing, which was to safely treat human diseases, it has gotten away from that purpose. Here are some of the problems with animal testing: first, only 1.16% of diseases are shared between humans and animals. Since we don’t share many diseases, animal testing isn’t very helpful. And for those diseases that are shared by humans and animals, even if a procedure is successful in animals, there’s no guarantee that it will be 100% successful in humans. Even if you’re in favor of animal testing, you probably don’t want to be the first person to try a new drug or new surgery that was tested on animals. This is because while animal testing can be helpful, it doesn’t always translate to humans. If you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem that helpful to test on animals. Thalidomide, a drug created in Germany in the 1960s to prevent morning sickness in pregnant women, showed few side effects in almost all animal studies and was touted as a “miracle drug with no side effects”, so many countries used it. However, it has been linked to malformed babies when taken by pregnant women. It has been shown that taking the drug within 42 days of conception results in 100% of babies being born with deformities such as no limbs or very short limbs, missing or missing hands and toes. In fact, none of the above would have happened without animal testing. People took the drug because it was deemed safe by animal testing, and no one would have taken it if they didn’t know it was safe. There’s no guarantee that this false sense of safety won’t happen again in the future. Because of these problems, I don’t think animal testing should be done.
Secondly, a more recent issue related to animal testing is cosmetic animal testing. In order to develop new cosmetics, newly developed products are tested on animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rats. To test for allergic reactions, the products are sometimes injected directly into the eyes, nose, and mouth, causing many animals to lose their eyesight or die. Just as humans have basic rights, animals also have animal rights. Animals, like humans, are living beings, and their lives must be respected. We shouldn’t violate their rights. In Korea, we have animal protection laws to prevent cruelty to animals, protect their safety, and respect their lives. However, I think it is wrong to use them for cosmetic purposes rather than to treat diseases. In the case of cosmetics, there are more than 5,000 ingredients that have already been proven safe. It would be enough to create cosmetics using only these ingredients, but many countries around the world still allow animal testing of cosmetics. This seems to be a departure from the fundamental purpose of animal testing and disregards the rights of animals in favor of our own interests. If you think about it the other way around, if you wanted to make a good shampoo for your cat, you’d test it on humans, and you’d realize how ridiculous it is. It’s one thing if the life of one creature is used to save the life of another, but it’s another thing if it’s consumed for the personal benefit of another. For these reasons, I believe that animal testing should be abolished.
Of course, animal testing has led to tremendous medical advances and has been used to save many lives. But the side effects have killed a lot of people, and an equally large number of animals. This is not to say that animal testing is unnecessary in the 20th century. It is said that animal testing is necessary because 20th-century computers cannot adequately understand molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and their interrelationships with the environment. But with today’s technology, I wonder if this is really possible. Think about the computers of 10 years ago and the computers of today. Do you think anything that was impossible then would be impossible now? I don’t think anyone would think so. It doesn’t make sense to use animal testing because of a lack of technology. Sure, we may not have more accurate results than animal testing right now. But that’s because by allowing animal testing, we’ve prevented the development of technologies that could replace it. If we banned animal testing, we would definitely need to replace it, and it’s hard to imagine how far that technology would go. Besides, there are already many alternatives to animal testing today. Nevertheless, I think it’s wrong to insist on animal testing because it’s cheaper and easier. As of right now, 600 million animals are killed in animal testing every year. That’s 20 animals dying every second. I believe that the current practice of animal testing, which has deviated from the fundamental purpose of animal testing, is simply a means to fulfill human desires. It’s time to find the rights of animals, not just the rights of people, and to ban animal testing and develop technologies that can replace it.