Animal rights
Did we really have to carry on vivisection or eating animals? Aren`t all animals as equal as we are as living creatures? To these questions I can only give positive answers.
First of all, on the issue of testing drugs on animals for side effects in human beings, as we know from the thalidomide case, it`s very difficult to predict what the effect of a drug will be on human beings - tests done on animals can prove to be ineffective in case of people. Besides, if we look at penicillin and aspirin, two of the most famous modern drugs, which were found by accident. No animal was needed to find them.
Secondly, all experiments on animals should be stopped because they are cruel and inhumane. Dogs are made to smoke cigarettes, rats and mice have shampoo and cosmetics squirted in their eyes to see what will happen. But everybody should know that these animals suffer so much that most of them have to be put down.
Therefore, we shouldn`t approve of using animals for cosmetics and even medical tests, as both human beings and animals feel pain and suffer from being beaten cruelly. And further, many experiments are so grotesque that they diminish the dignity of man and are only conducted for the benefit of mankind. Hardly anybody realizes that animals ought to enjoy the same rights as we - people - do.
I think so, because so far too many animals have been abused and exploited and they can only depend on us for their protection. If we don`t protect them, who will? Because the animals are the living creatures in the same case as we are, we have no rights to kill them. We shouldn`t be allowed to do so. Nobody has the right to say ``Kill this stupid dog!``. Therefore, I will always insist on saying that it`s time animals were allowed to enjoy the gift of life as much as we do. They will only do so when scientific experiments on them are banned for ever.
For the same reasons, I`d always say that we shouldn`t kill animals just to eat them. We can do without eating them and be as healthy as any other creature which depends only on plants, eg. mice, many birds - they eat only plants and are strong enough to run quickly and cover very long distances in a very short time. To provide ourselves with indispensable vitamins, we can eat, eg. soya beans, nuts, brown bread, which contain the same quantity of valuable protein as meat. Although vegetarianism hasn`t gained many advocates so far, it should have - mainlt for moral and religious reasons.
Not only people but animals as well can feel pain, love, be devoted to each other, so don`t deprive them of their rights to be free and don`t kill them for your pleasure, as they do want to live and feel free in this brutal world, where there are too many people thinking only about their stomach and wearing clothes made from animals` skin
Animal rights
More than four milion animal experiments are carried out annuallu in Britain.
Two facts are fundamental to the debate about them. First: without animal experiments much medical and biological research would grind to a halt. Second someexperiments do cause suffering.
Huge areas of medical research would be impossuble if all animal experiments were bannrd. Most research on the nature of, and cures for, cancer would be impossible. Work on organ transplantation and other forms of experimental surgery wuld cease. Above all there would be no new drugs. "The last 20 years or so", says Sir William Paton, professor of pharnacology at Oxford and former chairman of the Research Defency Society, "have seen the development of polio vaccines, drugs for high blood pressure, anti-depresants, and so on. Without animal experiments we would have had none of these".
Brigid Brophy the novelist,a campaigner for total abolition of animal experiments, faces this issue squarely: "The loss that might result is a loss humanity would have to bear", she says. We would not, she points out, experiment on 10 children to find a cure for a disease that would save the lives of thousand. "if we adandoned experiments on other animals we might have to bear more losses of that kind. But I think the scientists could come up with alternatives". But how many people would accept the death of a single child if animal experiments could save it ?
The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer? The arguments can be extremly uncomfortable: "People will always defend animal experimentation on the grounds that animals are not rational, thinking creatures. Well, neither is a severly retarded person. The same people will then say that if you were to experiment on a retarded person it would be upsetting for their families. So why shoudn't we use, for instance, a severely retared child who is also an orphan? The human model will always serve our purposes better than an animal. If you don't accept this then logically you shouldn't accept experiments on non-human animals.
Speech-animal experiments
It is claimed that Animal Experiments are necessary for the benefit of medical science and human health. However, a growing number of doctors and scientists worldwide are pointing out the fact that animal research is totally useless and damaging to human health.
Testing a drug or chemical on an animal provides no evidence that it is safe for humans. This is because of species differences: animals do not react in the same way to drugs and other substances as we do.
It is true that animal tests give results about the whole body but it is the wrong body.
Animal tests do harm to people and to animals. Though about 80% of laboratory animals are rats and mice, these creatures can suffer like any others and deserve our respect.
So why does Animal Research continue?
Because it is convenient and flexible- it can be used to prove almost anything.
Because many scientists base their entire careers on animal experiments.
Drug companies can say that they have tested their drugs before marketing them.
It is fairly cheap and simple.
It is easy to forget that this is just one method of research- there are others. They include:
- epidemiology, in which groups of people are monitored to discover the causes of disease
test- tube experiments with human tissues for the production of biological products like vaccines and antibodies.
Computer simulations of body systems for use in medical research and in teaching.
These tests have two key advantages over animal experiments there is no suffering and results are directly relevant to human medicine.
Animal testing.
Each year about five million dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, monkeys, and other animals die in lethal tests performed in the U.S. During such experiments strange substance are forced into the animals throats, or are pumped into their stomachs by a tube. Experimental medicines are injected under the skin, into a vein, abdomen, applied to the eyes of an animal or forciblly inhaled through a gas mask. Scientists observe the animal's reactions such as convulsions, laboured breathing, skin eruptions, abnormal posture, and bleeding from the eyes, nose or mouth. According to statistics, 50% of these creatures will die in this expirement 2 to 3 weeks later and those who wont die-will be killed.
The horrible fact about these incidents is that they are unneccesarry as there exist cheaper and more efficient ways to test medicines without causing animals torment.
One o them is cell and tissue cultivation. Cells are taken from humane body and cultivated to the tissue. Then medicines and chemical substances can be tested on it. As this is humane tissue there is no risk that the test will be unreliable. What is more on one piece of the tissue several experiments can be made not as on an animal when one creature is used for one experiment. The other great advantage of cultivation is fact that there is practically no possibility that tested medicine will occure toxic or side effect causing. There were a lot of accidents when medicament worked great on animal but for people was dangerous and vice versa.
The other way of experimenting is based on computer technology. Most of new drugs in fact are mixtures of old, known ones. Using sophisticated computer programes the dostors can now predict the effect such mixes can cause. What's interesting a company from US invented special programme which simulates clinical experiments on two virtual asthmatics and this helps to find more and more efficiet anti astmathic medicines.
As you can see there are many ways to avoid animal testing, so why do we allow such cruelty and suffering of animals? They are part of our world, and deserve some mercy and understaning. If there weren't any other possibilities to save peoples lives without causing death of creatures , such experiments probably would be excusable, but now in XXI th century when science is developing really quickly we should stop being inhumane cause If we don't care for animals- then who will?
Animal testing
History of medical researches begins hundreds years ago when people often called wizards were preparing mixtures to heal people. In that times nobody was criticising ways of developing drugs. Nowadays, there are millions of cosmetics, chemistry and medicine products around us. What is more, methods of testing them developed. We can check them by chemistry but to some products animals are the only way to test them.
It is fashionable to criticise modern drugs and the ways that we develop them, but we should never forget that there have been millions of lives saved by them. Testing animals was the only chance to make many vaccines. In the same way was about insulin. There are some people, who believe that insulin wasn't purified for use by testing animals. BULLSHIT! I have many proves that it is a lie. Insulin - the live saving drug for diabetics was discovered by tests on ones doctors dog!
Animal testing is required to make sure that drugs are safe before being tried on humans. I can't imagine introducing a new medicine without checking its effects on animals. Ofcourse there accidents where results of animal testing were different to human. It is not the point to stop researches. It is only one drop of milk in the ocean of coffee.
In some areas of researches humans are the only alternatives to animals. Researches would have stopped without animal testing. Nobody would like to be a tester of some new drug - it is just too dangerous. On the other hand we have to develop them - so the only thing we have are animals. It is also worth mentioned that there is a minimum of suffering in experiments, and this is because they are cared out carefully. Moreover about, all of these animals were specially bred for researches. They live to serve humans.
My opinion is that toady's world would have gone without this "different help of animals". Maybe some of researches are unnecessary. We should reduce them. Nevertheless I deeply believe that at least half of us wouldn't exist now on this planet without animal testing.