Should animals be used for research?

Abstract

In reality the medical research involves three facets: use of animal in learning, acquiring new knowledge, and the testing of chemical compounds and devices used for safety and effectiveness.

Being in favor of, should animals be used for research, the reason for which the results from animal experiments apply to the people is because of that the Human anatomy.

I. Introduction

Globally new drug and efficacy of medicines / vaccines / biological or other pharmaceutical products are based on experiments involving animals. This report mainly deals with the use of animals for medical research. It highlights the need and utility of animals in various biological experiments. The orientation of this report is to highlight the important areas, views and results of researchers in this context. It also includes the illustrations and experiments done by the researchers.

We have explored both the facets of the topic i.e. should we use the animals in scientific research and should we not use the animals in scientific research. Moreover the discussion has been done for both the views and finally a concrete conclusion has been made for the use of animals for scientific research. The medium of research enquiry has been through various medical research papers, researcher’s views and experiments done for the same.

It has been proved through scientific research that human biological structure is similar to the animals, and human life is considered to be more at the conscious level than animals, so it is required to carry out the research on animals before human being.

II. Literature review

During the process of literature review the main focus has been understanding the historical perspective of using animals in scientific research and also understanding the scientific prospective. This report also focuses on drilling down the different opinions towards the use of animal in scientific research.

Historical Prospective

The petting of the animals was also the trend in the ancient life, hence, the relationship of human health animal diseases like Judaic Law prohibiting the eating of pork, has been observed by early priests. Galen in Roman times, the Anatomy’s father used dissecting of the animals to learn about their body and organs structure and after that using them for teaching others.

In France in 1762, the first veterinary college at Lyon was created and the training, which was present already, in the human medicine study, was used as a basic tool. To obtain the instructions in veterinary Medicine was encouraged by the rural physicians in Germany, which was known as a skilled trade during those days. By the end of the century many organisms which causes diseases were found during animal research, also the amazing developments and advancements have been observed in the processes as anesthesia and surgical antisepsis. Even today in the modern world the major part of society do agree with the use of animals in the scientific researches. The benefits of animal research were observed during the World War I. (OSERA)

Scientific Prospective

The following four reasons could be used to understand the use of animal in scientific research (OSERA):

1. The scientists have the opinion that there were similarity between animals and humans in anatomy and also in physiology. Therefore, it is advisable to use animals instead of humans for introductory research.
2. It has also been found that same kind of diseases or conditions may be there in animals as in humans. This commonality helps the scientist to develop an understanding for creating suitable treatments.
3. As different human has different lifestyle so the appropriate investigation may be difficult while in case of animals the control environment could be provided to undergo the specific research.
4. The investigation on animals, as per number, is easy than on number of human. As a conclusion cannot be taken as a research on the investigation of individual and a large sample is required to get averagely appropriate research. Also until and unless a variety of environmental factors has been exposed, the actual result is obstacle and the researchers cannot make a correct decision.

Aspects of use of animals in scientific research

Various scientific researchers involve animals for various medicinal, remedial and behavioral experiments for the purpose of people. It is mainly occur in the rich countries and affect the poor countries and people of those countries.

For centuries, for understanding the human anatomy and also the human disease, the animals use is good and old practice used by the researchers. As a vital information about many physiological processes are provided by the animal research which are relevant to humans and has been used as fundamental in the development of many medicines, drugs and clinical remedies which include any anesthetics, antibiotics and vaccines. It is assumed that the Humans and the Animals are approximately similar in many ways. The behavior is found complex in both humans as well as the animals (Rogers, 2007).

Tissues to replace a diseased human under intense investigation are the prospect of animal tissues to be used, as they are so similar in the human and the animal in the formation of the cellular structures, proteins, and genes, as life-saving transplant otherwise he would never receive a potential remedies.

But it is true to understand that there are drastic differences both in physiologically and behaviorally, in which both the humans and animals respond to their own environments in various ways. And also the laboratory conditions in which animals are reserved that can influence and also alter the results which are experimental to be examined on a human.

Chemical properties such as solubility in liquids or in fats, molecular and atomic size and chemical constituents of a drug, are the main factor which largely determines the reaction of a body against the drug. It has been found during the experiments that the results on human cells are sometimes applicable to find out the probable outcomes of studies of animals, there are frequently not expected effects in animals, and if these effects will be applicable to humans remains uncertain till the clinical trials in human subjects have not been performed. (Fox, 1986)

Importance of use of animals in scientific research

For a question should animals be used for experimentation, we put some light to understand the type of experimentation being conducted. For the verification of new medicine or complex whether it is fatal to use in humans medical research requires the use of animals. If animals were unavailable then we would not be able to have any new treatment or drugs.

Then, depending on the drug being tested, they move to a mammal, such as a rat or a dog or a monkey, before testing the same drug on humans. This is to avoid the chances death and illness in people. For both alike the researchers and the medical students, the animals are also wonderful learning tools. For basic researches, to understand the diseases the dogs are an excellent duplicate of the cardiovascular system of humans. A surgeon can always practice on a heart of dog, before chance up a person for the open heart surgery. For knowledge about genetic or deviations of enzyme, samples of tissue provided from diabetic dogs causes the breakdown of body of humans as we age. Research models for the disease like AIDS and achievable treatment for HIV, monkeys are provided as the best mimic. As a human lacking our animal complement in research, we would definitely be at loss, as the ratio of human mortality is increased (Prater, 2007).

Animals should not be used in scientific research

It has been observed that there are approximately 3 and 115 million animals died per year in scientific research in UK and USA respectively. The statistics also shows that an animal dies for a scientific research almost in every three seconds. Therefore, we are killing animals which leads the globe to vanish breeds of animals. Moreover exacts numbers of killing of animals for scientific research is not known to the world, it could be even more than the figures given (Animals Should Not Be Used In Scientific Research).

It is observed that use of animals is not efficient for the scientific research. In case of research in the effectiveness of compound of pharmaceutical or the chemical’s toxicity, using animals is not an efficient way. It has been observed that use of pharmaceutical compounds for medical research, could only provide a way for information to the clinical data. For example in case of killing of cancer cells, it is found that medical research only provides information about the efficacy of the pharmaceutical compound. Moreover in case of pharmacokinetic effects, effect of human body on a pharmaceutical drug, and pharmacodynamic effect, effect of pharmaceutical drug on human body, the animal testing only guide the side effects of a drug on the animals. This testing is done before launching a drug into the market, to test its viability on humans. Though a complete picture cannot be analyzed as the drug goes to specific organs through the bloodstream, where it undergoes the chemical transformations and the result of the drug is then determined. (Monamy, 2000)

In today’s scientific world there have been alternatives for the animal research. Some of the alternatives could be used for the animal research are computer modeling, advanced statistical design, use of synthetic skin called Corrositex, and the Murine Local Lymph Node Assay. These alternatives help in reducing the number of animals to be used in scientific research (GEARI).

III Discussion

During our literature survey it is found that there are multiple views for the selected topic. One group of people feel that it is necessary to use animals for animal research and other group of people feel that use of animal in scientific research is not advisable. As per the study done in the literature review, it is found by early priests that there is relationship between human diseases and human diseases. One of the examples of such disease is Judiac law, which relates human health animal diseases. In the ancient times as well dissection of animals has been used to study the behavior of animals and there correlation with animal organism. In fact in Germany, the correlation was found in veterinary medicines. In fact with the help of animal research, organisms of lot of diseases, like anesthesia and surgical antisepsis, have been identified and the same has been applied on the human. It has been observed, during World War I, that there are various benefits of animal research. Nowadays, our society does agree with the use of animals in research.

It is scientifically also proved that animals should be used for medical research. Some of the identified reasons are, firstly the theory of physiology proves that there is similarity between the behavior of animals and humans, secondly the similarity between human and animal organisms has also been observed, thirdly, with the help of animal research controlled environment could be maintained and relevant research could be carried out and lastly, a valid sample data could be collected through animal research for a particular study.

It is observed that the behavior of animals as well as that of humans is complex in one respect or the other. There is quite similarity between the tissue of humans and animals. The behavior of tissues of animals and humans is also similar. It is easy to understand the behavior of both animals and examine them under a controlled environment. These situations help the researchers to easily examine the certain situation. The examination of a particular drug on animals also reduces it chances of failure on humans and would certainly reduces the human death toll. Moreover animal research also provides a base for medical practitioners to practice. For cardiovascular diseases, for example dog, is a perfect replication of human cardiovascular system. Moreover dog is also helpful for examining the behavior of genetic and enzyme deviation of humans. In case of developing the research model for AIDS, monkeys can be used as the best substitute of animal. (Nordgren, 2010)

One of the major drawbacks of using animals for animal research is mass killing of animals. It is observed a lot of animals are killed for the successful execution of a particular research. In fact animal research has reduces the count of various animal species to a significant number. It has direct impact on the global warming and global environment. In certain cases animals are killed just for studying the behavior of the tissues. In fact in such cases a joint venture of medical research and medical studies could be used. It would definitely reduce the number of killing to a significant number. In this scientific world, there are several options available for the animal research. The example of these alternatives involves computer modeling, synthetic skin, computer statistical models, and LLNA.

IV Conclusion

The research papers show various facets of the animal research. It focuses on the use of animals in scientific research and also talks about adverse effects of using the animals in scientific research. It is observed that since history, it is evident that scientific research has been successful and most promising method of researching about the behavior of diseases in animals and establishing their correlation with the humans. These researches have helped in establishing the similarity between organisms of human and animal. It also helps in reducing the deaths of human through preclinical trials on animals. It became an essential way forward to carry out these researches so that the human lives could be saved to a larger extent. Once the success of computer modeling and statistical research is established then the animal research could be minimized and use of computer modeling.