Is Animal Testing (for Medical Purposes) Ethically Acceptable or Not?

[Debater Slayer]

In your opinion, is animal testing for medical purposes--such as testing the safety or side effects of medications--ethically acceptable? Why or why not?

Please note that this question is strictly about medical testing. Cosmetic testing is a different issue and not relevant to the question in this thread.

 

[sun rise]

I answered other. The question is too vague. What kind of testing? Which animals? Are the animals killed or suffer? For what diseases? So my answer becomes:

If the disease is serious
if the testing is limited to the minimum requiring live animals
if there are no good alternatives to animal testing
if every effort is made to minimize pain and suffering
if the animals are not casually killed
then I would say that the testing is ethically acceptable.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I answered other. The question is too vague. What kind of testing? Which animals? Are the animals killed or suffer? For what diseases? So my answer becomes:

Medical testing in general with the main purposes being the studying of side effects and effectiveness of different treatments, from antibiotic trials to testing of painkillers and diabetes medications.

As for the animals, some commonly used species in certain fields are rats, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys. There are more, but I'm listing just a few for the purpose of the question.

If the disease is serious
if the testing is limited to the minimum requiring live animals
if there are no good alternatives to animal testing
if every effort is made to minimize pain and suffering
if the animals are not casually killed
then I would say that the testing is ethically acceptable.

What would you designate a "serious disease"? Is there a specific threshold beyond which a disease qualifies for such a designation?

 

[Mock Turtle]

I voted other, since my conscience (and natural empathy towards all life) tells me that this is not justified - treating other species as objects simply for our benefit - but then this would imply I should be vegan (at least) and that I would have to reconcile the fact that many humans would likely suffer and/or die when we could have a means of preventing such. Perhaps it is down to the likelihood of them (the animals) suffering and/or dying too. A very difficult decision to make.

 

[Lyndon]

only about 10% of animal research is actually cutting edge research, the rest is pretty much wasted

 

[Meow Mix]

I voted "Other" because this is more difficult for me to answer than a straight trolley problem. Total moral paralysis.

 

[Secret Chief]

"In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans and warned that “patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease … poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research.”

Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.

For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, “We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.” This conclusion was echoed by former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who acknowledged that experimenting on animals has been a boondoggle. “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he said. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

- Animal Testing Facts and Statistics | PETA

I voted No.

 

[Debater Slayer]

"In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans and warned that “patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease … poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research.”

Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.

For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, “We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.” This conclusion was echoed by former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who acknowledged that experimenting on animals has been a boondoggle. “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he said. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

- Animal Testing Facts and Statistics | PETA

I voted No.

PETA doesn't strike me as a reliable or objective source to refer to when talking about this specific issue, despite my own conflicted opinions on the matter.

While the question of how much the results of animal testing apply to humans is a crucial one, sometimes one of the purposes of said testing is to serve as a step before human trials start. In many cases, we currently can't replicate the sample sizes animals can provide for testing, too, which adds a layer of complexity to the question due to the absence of a viable alternative.

Stanford University seems to me a more scientifically oriented and less ideologically driven source than PETA:

The ethics of animal experimentation

Nothing so far has been discovered that can be a substitute for the complex functions of a living, breathing, whole-organ system with pulmonary and circulatory structures like those in humans. Until such a discovery, animals must continue to play a critical role in helping researchers test potential new drugs and medical treatments for effectiveness and safety, and in identifying any undesired or dangerous side effects, such as infertility, birth defects, liver damage, toxicity, or cancer-causing potential.

U.S. federal laws require that non-human animal research occur to show the safety and efficacy of new treatments before any human research will be allowed to be conducted. Not only do we humans benefit from this research and testing, but hundreds of drugs and treatments developed for human use are now routinely used in veterinary clinics as well, helping animals live longer, healthier lives.

Why Animal Research?

 

[Secret Chief]

PETA doesn't strike me as a reliable or objective source

I agree, yet assuming the quotes are genuine I find it difficult to think of a context in which the point apparently being made would be different.

I suppose the bottom line is the value placed on a human life compared to a non-human life, to justify the suffering and killing.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I voted "Other" because this is more difficult for me to answer than a straight trolley problem. Total moral paralysis.

Yeah, I definitely have conflicting thoughts about it as well. For example, if we argue that we should avoid testing medical treatments on animals based on the notion that we should treat animals the exact same way as humans (which I have seen some people do), should we also treat killing an animal as legally or morally equivalent to killing a human? And if we don't, on what basis are we saying that we shouldn't conduct medical testing on animals and should instead test on humans only?

It's a complicated subject in general, and I find that the best answer for the time being most likely lies somewhere between the absolutist and simplistic arguments from organizations like PETA and the dismissive arguments apathetic to animal suffering from some people who don't care at all about animals' well-being.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I answered other. The question is too vague. What kind of testing? Which animals? Are the animals killed or suffer? For what diseases? So my answer becomes:

If the disease is serious
if the testing is limited to the minimum requiring live animals
if there are no good alternatives to animal testing
if every effort is made to minimize pain and suffering
if the animals are not casually killed
then I would say that the testing is ethically acceptable.

I assumed that the OP was asking about medical testing on animals as it's done today.

From talking about this issue with a researcher who was actually doing medical testing on animals, I'm satisfied that all the conditions you listed are met.

As it stands now - at least here in Canada, in an academic setting - animal research gets a high level of scrutiny from ethics boards, and they impose very stringent requirements.

I answered "yes."

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I answered yes. Whatever our respective vote, I suspect that many if not most of us are able to do so - alive and free of disfiguring disease - thanks to such testing in the past.

The more fundamental question is: Is effective medical research acceptable and necessary? It's a difficult moral calculus and one that must give due consideration to the cost in human life that will necessarily result from prohibiting such work.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I agree, yet assuming the quotes are genuine I find it difficult to think of a context in which the point apparently being made would be different.

I suspect there is much more purpose to a lot of animal testing in medical trials than simply attempting to replicate the results in humans. Without more insight into that or thorough, qualified knowledge of why scientifically reliable organizations like Stanford view animal testing as a necessity and believe we currently don't have a viable alternative, I'm far from inclined to simply dismiss the work of all animal testers as being unethical or unnecessary.

This is despite recognizing that in many cases, more regulations still need to be put in place to keep the suffering of animals to an absolute minimum when we need them for testing. The treatment of animals not just in some medical trials but also in industrial farming and multiple other venues (such as in many zoos) is unconscionable, and I definitely believe more regulations and strict enforcement thereof need to happen in such cases.

I suppose the bottom line is the value placed on a human life compared to a non-human life, to justify the suffering and killing.

I agree. It's quite a complicated question, although many people seem to treat it as if it were a simple one.

 

[stvdv]

In your opinion, is animal testing for medical purposes--such as testing the safety or side effects of medications--ethically acceptable? Why or why not?

Please note that this question is strictly about medical testing. Cosmetic testing is a different issue and not relevant to the question in this thread.

For me it is not ethically acceptable to use animal testing (kind of torturing/killing animals who are also creatures with feeling)
(some animals show more feeling than some humans even, so if you use animals with more feelings then you should also use humans IMO)

IF I love my cat THEN I don't want to have my cat being used for animal testing for medical purposes
Same will be for other cat-lovers, they don't want their cat being used for it either
Same will be for dog-lovers, rat-lovers, bird-lovers etc

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I suspect there is much more purpose to a lot of animal testing in medical trials than simply attempting to replicate the results in humans. Without more insight into that or thorough, qualified knowledge of why scientifically reliable organizations like Stanford view animal testing as a necessity and believe we currently don't have a viable alternative, I'm far from inclined to simply dismiss the work of all animal testers as being unethical or unnecessary.

The researcher I mentioned earlier might be a useful example.

He was a neurology PhD student. The university lab where he worked was doing trials on mice for using a stem cell treatment to repair spinal cord damage.

For the study, they had to surgically sever the spines of a number of mice, then treat them with the stem cell treatment, and measure the results.

Personally, I see this kind of work as valuable and important. I also don't see how the research could ever get from the theoretical to a treatment for people without going through animal trials like what he was doing.

Interesting side note: he mentioned that animal testing only gets approved in a weird little niche. The use of animal subjects doesn't get approved by the ethics board if there isn't a significant body of evidence supporting the thing that the researchers want to test for, but they also won't approve it to just confirm things that are already known.

The net result is that animal testing only gets approved if it will expand scientific knowledge somewhat, but not too much, and lots of potential research ideas don't fall into that narrow range.

 

[Lyndon]

10% of the scientists make 90% of the discoveries, the other 90% still want to do their animal testing.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

For me it is not ethically acceptable to use animal testing (kind of torturing/killing animals who are also creatures with feeling
(some animals show more feeling than some humans even, so if you use animals with more feelings then you should also use humans IMO)

IF I love my cat THEN I don't want to have my cat being used for animal testing for medical purposes
Same will be for other cat-lovers, they don't want their cat being used for it either
Same will be for dog-lovers, rat-lovers, bird-lovers etc

How about love of humans?

Banting and Best's research on dogs is the reason that insulin-dependent diabetics are alive today.

Do you love any diabetics?

 

[stvdv]

How about love of humans?

For me it is not ethically acceptable to use human testing either
Unless they volunteer of course

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

For me it is not ethically acceptable to use human testing either
Unless they volunteer of course

I meant the humans whose lives were saved by past animal testing, or will be saved by future animal testing.

Banting & Best used (AFAICT) several hundred dogs in their research. Before them, type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.

I can't find worldwide stats for type 1 diabetes, but just looking at the US, there are currently 1.6 million people with type 1 diabetes and 64,000 people get diagnosed with it each year:

Type 1 Diabetes Statistics

All of these people are alive today as a direct result of that animal research in the 1920s.

How many human lives is each of those dogs' lives worth?

 

[stvdv]

I meant the humans whose lives were saved by past animal testing, or will be saved by future animal testing.
Banting & Best used (AFAICT) several hundred dogs in their research. Before them, type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.
I can't find worldwide stats for type 1 diabetes, but just looking at the US, there are currently 1.6 million people with type 1 diabetes and 64,000 people get diagnosed with it each year:
Type 1 Diabetes Statistics
All of these people are alive today as a direct result of that animal research in the 1920s.
How many human lives is each of those dogs' lives worth?

As I said "For me it is not ethically acceptable to use animal/human testing"
I phrased it as my personal opinion

I do not judge you and/or others who have a different opinion and/or kill animals
I have my view, others have their view. I even don't want to change them