DO WE NEED USE OF ANIMAL IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
WHY ARE ANIMALS USED IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?
Animals are used in scientific research to help us understand our own bodies and how they work. This is necessary to develop new medicines. Animals are also used to safety test potential medicines before they are tested in people and to check the safety of other chemicals.
Animals, from the fruit fly to the mouse, are widely used in scientific research. They are crucial for allowing scientists to learn more about human biology and health, and for developing new medicines.
The use of animals in scientific research has long been the subject of heated debate. On the one hand it is considered morally wrong to use animals in this way solely for human benefit.
On the other hand, removing animals completely from the lab would impede our understanding of health and disease, and consequently affect the development of new and vital treatments. Although sometimes these studies do reduce the quality of life of these animals, thorough regulations are in place to ensure that they are carried out in a humane way.
To help minimise the harm animals may experience while being studied in the laboratory, researchers are required to follow a set of principles, the ‘three Rs’. These are:
Replace: Replacing, where possible, experiments using animals with alternative techniques such as cell culture, computer modelling or human volunteers instead of animals.
Reduce: Reducing the number of animals used, by improving experimental techniques and sharing information with other researchers so that the same experiments aren’t being done by many people.
Refine: Refining the way the animals are cared for to help minimise any stress or pain, by using less invasive techniques where possible and improving medical care and living conditions.
Animals are used in research when there is no other way to do the science. In places such as the UK and the EU, this is written into law and it is illegal to use an animal in research where there is a practical alternative.
There are four main reasons why animals are used in research:
To improve our understanding of biology
Fighting disease – in both humans and animals – depends on understanding biological processes which are sometimes very subtle and complex. Large parts of animal and human biology work in the same or in very similar ways, not just in vital functions such as breathing, digestion, movement, sight, hearing and reproduction but at the level of basic cell processes too. That means we can study how bodies work by running experiments in animals that would be impossible in human volunteers, and this is where most research animals are used. Studying how healthy bodies function often reveals what is happening when things go wrong.
Many very complex biological systems such as nervous and immune systems follow the same basic organisation and function in all animals. That means that even simple animals can be used to study these systems. A lot of what we know about brain cells (neurons) comes from studying the giant squid, for example, and microscopic nematode worms have helped in our understanding of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s which causes dementia. The law says that wherever a simpler animal can be used, whether it’s a squid, worm or fruit fly, it must be.
Human beings use animals for a wide variety of purposes, including research. The approximately 260 million people in the United States keep about 110 million dogs and cats as pets. More than 5 billion animals are killed in the United States each year as a source of food. Animals are used for transportation, for sport, for recreation, and for companionship.7
Animals are also used to learn more about living things and about the illnesses that afflict human beings and other animals. By studying animals, it is possible to obtain information that cannot be learned in any other way. When a new drug or surgical technique is developed, society deems it unethical to use that drug or technique first in human beings because of the possibility that it would cause harm rather than good. Instead, the drug or technique is tested in animals to make sure that it is safe and effective.
Animals also offer experimental models that would be impossible to replicate using human subjects. Animals can be fed identical and closely monitored diets. As with inbred mice, members of some animal species are genetically identical, enabling researchers to compare different procedures on identical animals. Some animals have biological similarities to humans that make them particularly good models for specific diseases, such as rabbits for atherosclerosis or monkeys for polio. (The polio vaccine was developed, and its safety is still tested, in monkeys.) Animals are also indispensable to the rapidly growing field of biotechnology, where they are used to develop, test, and make new products such as monoclonal antibodies.
Researchers draw upon the full range of living things to study life, from bacteria to human beings.8 Many basic biological processes are best studied in single cells, tissue cultures, or plants, because they are the easiest to grow or examine. But researchers also investigate a wide range of animal species, from insects and nematodes to dogs, cats, and monkeys. In particular, mammals are essential to researchers because they are the closest to us in evolutionary terms. For example, many diseases that affect human beings also affect other mammals, but they do not occur in insects, plants, or bacteria.
Far fewer animals are used in research than are used for other purposes. An estimated 17 to 22 million vertebrate animals are used each year in research, education, and testing—less than 1 percent of the number killed for food.9 About 85 percent of these animals are rats and mice that have been bred for research. In fiscal year 1988, about 142,000 dogs and 52,000 cats were used in experimentation, with 40,000 to 50,000 of those dogs being bred specifically for research and the others being acquired from pounds.10 Between 50,000 and 60,000 nonhuman primates, such as monkeys and chimpanzees, are studied each year, many of them coming from breeding colonies in the United States.11
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