Animal Testing Should Be Allowed in Medical Research

Conducting experiments on animals for medical improvement has always been a highly controversial issue. Animal rights organisations such as PETA question the legitimacy of it, arguing that it is cruel and unacceptable while the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki states clearly that human trials should be preceded by tests on animals if possible. In this case, though I commiserate the experimented animals, I support animal testings as they are vital to medical advancements for the sake of human race.

Nearly all medical breakthroughs over the recent decades were based on the ground of animal testing. The polio vaccine were mainly tested on monkeys for amelioration. The effectiveness of this vaccine is extraordinary. Apparently , it declined the global occurrence of the disease from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1606 cases in 2009The lack of insulin were also discovered to be the cause for type 1 diabetes by experiments on dogs and rabbits. Before that, those patients could only wait hopelessly for their time to come. It is definitely remarkable that countless “terminal” illnesses were treated because of researches involving animal testing. People escaped death from diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and so on within a short period of time. Millions have been saved and the credit goes to animal testing.

The general public holds negative opinion towards animal research even if they realise the benefits of it. Many develop this attitude because of the photos of rats and dogs in terrible status which are all over the Internet. However, those are misleading information. Not to mention that some of them are edited photos, others are often from decades ago. Therefore, the current situation of animal testing is frequently misrepresented. In addition to government regulations, scientists are also guided by federal Animal Welfare Act when conducting animal research. Not only does it supervise the living standards of animals during experiments, it also appoints veterinarians to carry out inspections in laboratory to ensure humane treatments.

PETA considers animal experiments unacceptable as they harm animals and violate their rights. No doubt the majority of these experiments cause pain to the animals involved or affect their general well-being. However, the experimenters are well-aware of the ethical problem. After the Three R’s guiding principles were made official in 1959, they have endorsed and complied with the 3R’s at all times. In the guideline, the first R represents replacement, which means that one must use non-animal methods whenever it is possible to generate the same valid scientific result. The second R represents reduction, which means that the number of animals used in experiments must be reduced to minimum. The third R represents refinement, meaning that the experimenters have to keep the potential pain or distress for animals at the merest level whilst enhancing