Animal Testing in Drug Industry: Is It Appropriate or Not?

Animal Testing in Drug Industry: Is It Appropriate or Not?

Millions of people were killed by incurable diseases, such as smallpox, rabies, et cetera before the 18th century due to lack of knowledge in developing drugs and vaccine at that time. People caught by the diseases were hopeless because they knew that no one could help them. In the mid 1800s, animal testing was introduced to drug industry by Edward Jenner (Trueman, 2002). His brilliant discovery in developing smallpox vaccine by using animals helped a lot of people and gave hope to the medical field that incurable diseases were not incurable anymore. Although he was not the first man to use animal in experiments, his success made animal testing become commonly used in drug industry. Since then, animal testing has been playing an important role in producing drugs. It is used in developing new drugs and approving the safety of drugs. Hence, millions of unhealthy people have been helped indirectly by animal testing. However, animal testing is beneficial for human only and not for the animals used. Most of the animals which give great contribution to the health of world's dwellers are cruelly slaughtered during experiments and not well treated in drug-development laboratories. Animals, like human, also have rights to be freed from suffering and treated well. We, as human beings, must understand that animals are also living beings which feelings should be considered as well. So, is animal testing still appropriate to be used in drug industry? I do not think so. It is inappropriate because most of the testing implemented hurts the animals both physically and mentally, it generates a lot of social problem, and its results are often inaccurate. Also, there is no need to use animal testing in drug industry because alternative methods that could replace it have been developed.

How would you react when someone sting your finger harshly with a needle? Normally, you would express your pain by drawing your finger immediately and rub your finger gently, then show your displeasure to draw the person who stings you back. Animals' reactions are the same with that of human when they are pinpricked severely in drug laboratories. They can also feel physical pain. Many people do not understand this and think that animals do not have any feelings at all. Take Descartes, a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, for example. He stated that animals do not have minds. Animals are only machines created by God in order to please human beings (Singer, 1980). He also said that animals' movements and sounds are the same with those of a clock, but of course more complicated since clock is a machine made by human and animals are God's creation (Singer, 1980). This philosophy is very inaccurate. All animals, especially mammals, have the same basic nervous system as humans', although human nervous system is more complicated due to evolution (Singer, 1980). Therefore, animals also have a part of brain which detects pain, same with human. Physical pain is suffered by animals during many drug testing. For example, because of being injected carelessly with drugs, exposed to excessive amount of poisonous substances, and hit or kicked when they show a sign of rejection. Furthermore, they are enduring continual physical pain due to not being well kept. For instance, their cages are not cleaned regularly; they are fed with insufficient amount of food; their wounds and illnesses are not cured; et cetera. An example of animal physical abuse case in drug industry is the Huntingdon Life Science Ltd. (HLS) case which involved dog abuse in 1997 (Wikipedia, 2005). The dogs used were hit roughly when they wriggled during blood test. Moreover, sometimes the scientists did not find the vein of the dogs, so they just injected the drugs on any spot randomly, which cause unstoppable bleeding. They did not take care of the wounds they had caused; instead they just left the dog bleeding sometimes until the dogs were dead. Intolerable physical pain is suffered by the animals which have significant dedications to drug development because of animal testing. Thus, animal testing in drug industry must be stopped.

In addition to physical pain suffered by animals during drug testing, the animals also experience mental pain. According to Singer, three separate British government committees have agreed that animals are not only capable of feeling physical pain, but also mental pain, such as fear, anxiety, stress, et cetera (Singer, 1980). Animals kept in cages in drug laboratories are undergoing anxiety of being abused again every single day. Moreover, they endure stress and fear while the tests are being conducted. Sue Farinato in her article, Animal Protection Groups, Scientists Call for End to Non-Human Primates in Research and Testing, revealed,

"Primates in laboratories can be forced to live alone in small metal cages, be subjected to handling by humans, and endure various procedures, such as multiple surgeries, food and water deprivation, and infection with deadly pathogens. As a result, many live in a constant state of anxiety, remembering what has happened to them or their companions and anticipating what may happen next. Aberrant behaviors can result from these stressors, including self-mutilation, stereotypical movement, and hair-pulling". (Farinato, 2005)

This condition completely violates point number one in article six of universal declaration of animal rights, which says, "Experiments on animals entailing physical or psychological suffering violate the rights of animals" (FARL, 2005). Some may rebuke by saying that they do not know that the animals suffer from mental pain because animals cannot talk. Verbal language is not the only means of communication. We can notice a person's emotions without him saying anything because of non-verbal language or body language he expressed. If we can examine body language in human, then we are also able to observe non-verbal language of animals. In accordance to Charles Darwin in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, many of the non-verbal reactions of human in expressing emotions are identical with those of animals (Darwin, 1873). Thus, there is no reason that one, especially a scientist who has conducted a lot of experiments with animals, does not know whether an animal is suffering from mental pain or not. As psychological pains caused by animal testing offends the tested animals' welfare, alternative methods must be used to replace animal testing.

Animal testing not only afflicts animals being used, but also our society. A lot of harsh protests and terrorism have been done against animal testing. Those actions have caused many public losses. Plenty of innocent people have died; many unrelated private companies have been accidentally involved