ANALYZING THE BIAS IN ANIMAL USE
I've never had to make arguments that border on this subject cause I grew up thinking that it was only ideal to use animals for lab testing.
Having to think about it now, I'll start by saying that ethics is a very subjective group-thinking concept, and there are numerous benefits to animal research. Most of the medicine that humans take has been tested and developed from the use of animal in their medical research. There are more similarities between mammals than differences.
Using animals for research includes anything from observing animals out in the wild from a distance to performing surgery on animals in the lab. The ethical considerations are not the same for everyone. A number of people would argue that there are alternatives to be considered, and I have tried to spell them out as follows:
▪︎ Use animals for research.
▪︎ Use humans for research.
▪︎ Try to do the research without research studies.
▪︎ Don't do the research at all.
Personally, i like to assume think that the second option is practically unworkable, and that's because of the risk of harm involved in some studies. We might be okay with causing harm to a few number of animals, but that number of humans is just not it.
While options three and four will prevent harm to animals in general, it will likely increase harm to humans. In that, in some critical areas of research(cancer treatments, for example), correct testing before application will be ruled out.
See, one thing that i have come to observe is the unfairness of those who claim to love animals. I mean, there is no perfect animal lover in this world. We can not exist without killing or consuming other life forms. The only thing that we can choose is how complex that life form is. When you take an antibiotic, you kill millions of live creatures. Now, tell me, how is that different from harming a rat for an experiment?
We humans evolved to feel more
empathy towards life forms that are more similar to us. A lot of people feel empathy for rabbits, cats, and dogs. But less number of people feel that about chickens. Even fewer people feel that for snakes.
It's not clear to me why using animals for
research should be singled out for attention more than using animals for anything else (food, body parts like leather and feathers, labor, entertainment).
I understand how sensitive the topic is to some people. I do. But the thing here is, there are no better alternatives, and there
probably never will be. Tissue samples in petri dishes and computer simulations are fine screening tools, but nothing compares to a complete organism. To know what impact a newly researched liver drug will have on the human body requires a complete being. Not to forget that cells on the petri dish will not tell you how the drug will impact and interact with other organs in the body.
Also, hearing in mind that the complexity of our organs and systems just cannot be replicated artificially, yet, we must test the new research on humans, we could either go straight from inseminating the products in the petri dishes and into human for testing, or, alternatively, we can use an animal with similar biology to our own as an intermediate.
I promise you, if you were left to choose from either of the above options, you would choose the latter.
And now, the question is: Would you rather test a new and possibly potentially deadly product on a human or on a rat? That's simply what this all comes down to, and pretty much everyone values the human more than the rat.
This is the best that I could go for this whole ethical/moral calculus thing cause, personally, I'd rather see research that uses animal models if it means better treatments for humans.
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!
