6 Pros and Cons of Animal Testing for Medical Research

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6 Pros and Cons of Animal Testing for Medical Research

Researchers, doctors, scientists, and pharmacists are all working around the clock to come up with vaccines, medications, and cures for the diseases and illnesses present in our world today. But because a lot of these solutions need testing and experimentation before they’re formulated just right, they need to go through preliminary uses. Oftentimes, testing is performed on animals which is frowned upon by many organizations and individuals.

List of Pros of Animal Testing for Medical Reasons

1. No Need to Test on Humans
For a medication to be proven effective, it needs to show real results when used for the conditions it’s intended for. But because testing a experimental treatment on humans could prove fatal or dangerous to the health, using animals first to find out how it will react with living creatures will help scientists better adapt their formula for effectiveness.

2. Accurate Results
Although there are alternate methods of testing medications and cures, the results they render might not be relevant to humans. Because some animals can be used as better representation of humans, the test results gathered from animal testing can be assumed the same for humans.

3. Faster Development
Unlike other methods of medication testing, animal testing is a much faster route because developers can easily see what or why things happen, as opposed to depending on observing reactions at a molecular level.

List of Cons of Animal Testing for Medical Reasons

1. Animal Cruelty
Many of the animals that are used in labs for medical research are left traumatized, permanently disabled, or even dead. This raises very serious red flags for lots of animal rights groups and activists who believe animals should be given the same compassion as humans.

2. No Guarantee
The fact is, even if animal testing can eliminate some dangers of using new meds on humans, a medication needs to be tested on humans prior to release. This means some of the perils of using a certain formulation could only become apparent once it’s used on a living person, which means even with animal testing, there’s no guarantee that it will be a hundred percent safe.

3. Costly
Animals used for testing need to be sourced from legitimate breeders and suppliers that could bump up their prices to make bigger profits off of their creatures. This could spell massive expenses for researchers, as opposed to simply looking for willing volunteers who want to become part of the experimentation.