Animal Drug Testing: Advantages, Disadvantages, Implications (Essay Sample)

Animal Drug Testing
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According to experiments on animals, it has been noted that almost 100 million animals are being subjected to experiments. They include birds, reptiles, amphibians, rats, mice, including agricultural/ domestic animals. They are killed worldwide in laboratories for medical training, research reasons, biology lessons, curiosity-driven experiments, cosmetics testing, food, and also for drug testing.
Conferring to the laboratory of experiment medicine and the animal body by Kristin Asdal, during this experiments, these helpless animal specimens are subjected to inhalation of toxic fumes while others being immobilized under restraint devices for quite some time before they encounter their deaths. In some cases, some endure holes drilled deep into their skulls and to other extend, other specimens end up skinned alive or burned off while others have their spinal cords being crushed during the experiment. In addition to this kind of torment of actual experiments, these animals are found to be limited to access the natural environment including their diet while they are in the laboratories. This treatment of confining them to isolated cages makes them feel insecure and become psychologically traumatized with the situation (Kristin, A. et al., p.78-85,)
However, the use of animal as a specimen for laboratory experiments has significantly improved the field of medicine through the research progress and findings that have greatly contributed to the improvement of human health. The animals under experimentation are subjected to anesthetic injection before it is worked on to reduce the pain during the experiment (Kristine, A. et al. p. 116-120).
Though animals are used in coming up with drugs to cure a certain disease, clinical researchers should be keen on this as a pathogen artificially induced to an animal in the laboratory vary in some ways with those occurring naturally in human beings. This is important as animal species biologically differ from one another. For instance, the HIV/AIDS vaccine has been successful in the case of nonhuman primates but the same has failed in protecting humans against the virus. The American Cancer Society and National Multiple Sclerosis Society are some of the organizations that mainly do fund some research on animals.
Aggregate testing of animals by Kristin Asdal, also reports that experiments on animals have been proofed effective through laboratory research on coming up with more productive hybrid and high immune system to diseases. For instance, dogs were used in carrying out research which came to identify the cause of diabetes leading to the development of insulin to counter the disease. Additionally, dogs were crucial laboratory specimen to those researchers who used them to come up with open-heart surgery, heart, and pacemaker’s transplants. This has been a great advancement for the 21st century concerning the field of research in medicine and has led to the treatment of some diseases including vaccines by using animals as specimens
According to the British medical care organization (2014), the most commonly used species include birds, rats, reptiles, mice and amphibians which comprise almost 99% of those exempted from protection b...