Medical Testing On Animals (801 words)

Medical Testing On Animals Animals have been used in medical research for centuries. In a recent
count, it was determined that 8,815 animals were being used for research at
MSU, 8,503 of them rodents – rats, mice, hamsters and gerbils. There were
18 dogs, three cats and a variety of goats, ferrets, pigeons and rabbits.

The struggle against this tyranny is a struggle as important as any of the
moral and social issues that have been fought over in recent years.” Animal
rights are an emotional issue-second only, perhaps, to the bitter abortion
debate.” For decades the value of animal research has been grossly
overrated. Although researchers have depended on animal test data to
achieve medical advances, there should be other means of research because
testing on animals is cruel and inhumane and often unnecessary.

The American Medical Association believes that research involving
animals is absolutely essential to maintaining and improving the health of
the American people. They point out, that virtually every advance in
medical science in the 20th century, from antibiotics to organ transplants,
has been achieved either directly or indirectly through the use of animals
in laboratory experiments. They also emphasize that animal research holds
the key for solutions to AIDS, cancer, heart disease, aging and congenital
defects. Lastly they insist that, the result of these experiments has been
the elimination or control of many infectious diseases. This has meant a
longer, healthier , better life with much less pain and suffering. For
many patients, it has meant life it self.

However, there should be other means of research because the whole
process of animal research remains cruel and inhumane. Animal rights
activists have gathered much information that has closed down laboratories
that violate anti- cruelty statutes. “This includes a 1984 videotape
stolen from the University of Pennsylvania Head Injury Clinic. The
research subsequently suspended, reportedly involved inadequately
anesthetized baboons receiving blows to the head to break their necks and
cause brain damage.” Alex Pacheo gives a first-person account of the
conditions he witnessed in a primate laboratory. He is horrified by the
painful experiments these monkeys endure. “On May 11,1981 I began work[at
the Institute for Behavioral Research] and was given a tour…. I saw filth
caked on the wires of the cages, faces piled in the bottom of the cages,
urine and rust encrusting every surface. There, amid this rotting stench,
sat sixteen crab-eating macaques and one rhesus monkey, their liv limited
to metal boxes just 17 3/4 inches wide…. [An old refrigerator] had been
converted into a chamber containing a plexiglass immobilizing chair. A
monkey would be placed in a chamber, and electrodes attached to his body.

The monkey would be forced to try to squeeze a bottle of fluid with his
surgically crippled arm in order to stop the painful electric shock that
coursed through his body. The ceiling and walls of the chamber were
covered with blood. I remember Dr. Taub’s assistant, John Kunz, telling me
that some monkeys would break their arms in desperate attempts to escape
the chair and the intense electric shocks.” Young chimpanzees, 3 or 4
years old, were crammed, two together, into tiny cages. They could hardly
turn around. Not yet part of any experiment , they had been confined in
these cages for more than three months. The chimps had each other for
comfort, but they would not remain together for long. Once they are
infected, probably with hepatitis, they will be s eparated and placed in
another cage. And there they will remain, living in conditions of severe
sensory deprivation, for the next several years. During that time, they
will become insane. From the capture of primates in the wild, to the
“factory-like” breeding of mice and dogs, to the confinement and isolation
of cages – research is inherently cruel.

History has shown that many important medical advances have been made
by clinical research and close observations of human patients, not animal
research, which is often unnecessary. “There are whole countries that
don’t use healthy animals to train veterinarians or teach surgical
techniques,” said Liska, who’s been researching the issue since 1974. In
England they use only sick or injured animals and do much work on animal
cadavers. “Humans can give informed consent. Monkeys and dogs can’t.”
Many AIDS patients have said they are willing to try out new drugs.

“Instead, we use Rhesus monkeys.” “I actually have hurt animals
unnecessarily out of ignorance,” says Dr. Sherman Bloom. “If you’re
preaching reverence for animal life, you’re preaching reverence for life ,
period. And violence is the opposite of reverence