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Animals are used in many different kinds of experiments. These are just a few examples and alternatives to using animals in experiments.

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Animal Testing | Pros & Cons | ProCon.org

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Proponents say animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments. Opponents say animal testing is cruel and inhumane.

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The world is moving toward a future dominated by sophisticated methods that use human cells, tissues and organs, 3D printing, robotics, computer models and other technologies to create approaches to testing and research that do not rely on animals. These methods are often faster, less expensive and more effective than the outdated animal experiments currently in use. Despite this, millions of guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, primates, mice, rats and other animals still suffer in laboratories worldwide.

We are honored to be able to work with scientists, companies and governments to speed up this shift and eliminate the use of animals in research and testing. And 2021 has brought tremendous progress on this front: This year, five additional U.S. states ended the sale of animal-tested cosmetics, and Mexico became the first country in North America to ban the production and sale of animal-tested cosmetics. Not only do these advances mark a real shift to a more humane future through the elimination of unneeded tests for cosmetic products-it shows that there is real momentum in the movement to end the suffering of animals in laboratories.

Here are other wins achieved for animals in laboratories, both here in the U.S. and across the world in 2021:

In April, Humane Society International partnered with Hollywood filmmakers and 14 celebrities to produce a powerful stop-motion animated short film, #SaveRalph, calling for an end to cosmetic animal testing around the world. The film introduces our new spokesbunny, Ralph (voiced by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi), being interviewed as he goes through his daily routine as a "tester" in a toxicology lab. #SaveRalph quickly went viral on social media, garnering millions of views and close to five million petition signatures globally. Most importantly, Ralph helped us to advance animal testing bans around the world.

Spurred to action by the momentum of #SaveRalph, Mexico became the first country in North America to outlaw cosmetic testing on animals. Our federal bill in Chile has also advanced to the halfway mark with unanimous support in the Chamber of Deputies; the Canadian government has committed to introducing legislation to end cosmetic testing on animals by 2023 and phase out toxicity testing on animals by 2035; and our work with regulators and other stakeholders in Brazil, South Africa and Southeast Asia have laid the groundwork for more progress in the year ahead.

In the U.S., five states passed legislation ending the sale of animal-tested cosmetics: Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia. This brings the total number of states with sales bans for animal-tested cosmetics to eight, including California, Nevada and Illinois. In Brazil, an eleventh state, Acre, has banned animal testing for cosmetics.

At the federal level in the U.S., the bipartisan Humane Cosmetics Act, legislation to prohibit the production and sale of animal-tested cosmetics, was introduced in the U.S. Congress in December and has already been cosponsored by five senators and 137 representatives. The legislation was also introduced with support from the Personal Care Products Council, the trade association representing 90% of the U.S. cosmetics industry, which comes to approximately 600 member companies. In addition, 53 companies endorsed the Humane Cosmetics Act, bringing the total number of companies independently supporting the measure to 369.

Our efforts for animals in labs essentially require collaboration. Our work with the Animal-Free Safety Assessment Collaboration has allowed us to support legislative reforms and develop a state-of-the-art training course in non-animal testing and assessment. This goes a long way in helping small and medium-sized industries, regulators and other key stakeholders to trust and embrace new, animal-free approaches and legal reforms.

The European Parliament voted for a resolution asking the European Commission to draw up an action plan to phase out all animal experiments in the European Union. Adopted by 667 votes to four with the active support of HSI, the resolution asks for increased funding to non-animal methods, more training for scientists and regulatory reforms to accelerate the transition from animal models to more advanced technologies.

In Korea, HSI secured introduction of the Act on the Promotion of Development, Dissemination and Use of Alternatives to Animal Testing Methods (PAAM Act), a cross-cutting vehicle to compel federal regulatory and research ministries to prioritize a full replacement of animal use in science and accelerate efforts and funding toward this end.

HSI organized an international, multi-stakeholder workshop dedicated to the deletion of the Abnormal Toxicity Test, an obsolete animal-based safety test for biological products. Over one hundred participants, representing manufacturers and regulatory authorities from the largest vaccine-producing countries and regions, met to share their respective experiences, discuss the lingering challenges and define steps and activities to secure a global elimination of the test. In addition, HSI's activities contributed to both Brazilian and South Korean stakeholders taking concrete steps toward the deletion of the test.

We released a paper outlining how dogs are used in experiments that are funded, conducted, required or encouraged by the U.S. government along with our recommendations of what federal agencies should do to move away from and eventually eliminate the use of dogs in research and testing. Nearly 300,000 people have signed our petition to end the use of dogs in experiments in the U.S. Virginia also passed a law to give dogs and cats a chance at adoption following their time in the laboratory. Similar legislation is currently being considered in Michigan and Massachusetts.

We presented and participated in a workshop of international stakeholders devoted to substantially reducing, if not eliminating, the use of the 90-day pesticide test on dogs, currently required by regulating agencies around the globe. During the 90-day test, dogs are exposed to various levels of pesticides and then killed.

We filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health in response to its 2019 decision to keep 44 chimps at a New Mexico laboratory instead of moving them to Chimp Haven sanctuary as required by law. Since 2019, nine of the 44 chimps in New Mexico have died waiting for their chance to leave the lab. We also worked with members of Congress to include language in the House appropriations bill urging NIH to move government-owned chimpanzees to sanctuary.

All the success we have achieved this year to end the use of animals in research, testing and education would not have been possible without our dedicated and passionate base of supporters who refuse to accept the status quo for how animals have been treated for decades. As we look ahead to 2022, we feel fueled in our fight to bring about an end to cosmetics animal testing around the globe and to win protections for all animals used in research and testing.
Kitty Block is President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.

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Major progress for animals in laboratories in 2021 signals a more humane future

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By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block The world is moving toward a future dominated by sophisticated methods that use human cells, tissues and organs, 3D printing, robotics, computer models and other technologies to create approaches to testing and research that do not rely on animals.

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What is animal testing?

The term "animal testing" refers to procedures performed on living animals for purposes of research into basic biology and diseases, assessing the effectiveness of new medicinal products, and testing the human health and/or environmental safety of consumer and industry products such as cosmetics, household cleaners, food additives, pharmaceuticals and industrial/agro-chemicals. All procedures, even those classified as "mild," have the potential to cause the animals physical as well as psychological distress and suffering. Often the procedures can cause a great deal of suffering. Most animals are killed at the end of an experiment, but some may be re-used in subsequent experiments. Here is a selection of common animal procedures:

Forced chemical exposure in toxicity testing, which can include oral force-feeding, forced inhalation, skin or injection into the abdomen, muscle, etc.

Exposure to drugs, chemicals or infectious disease at levels that cause illness, pain and distress, or death

Genetic manipulation, e.g., addition or "knocking out" of one or more genes

Ear-notching and tail-clipping for identification

Short periods of physical restraint for observation or examination

Prolonged periods of physical restraint

Food and water deprivation

Surgical procedures followed by recovery

Infliction of wounds, burns and other injuries to study healing

Infliction of pain to study its physiology and treatment

Behavioural experiments designed to cause distress, e.g., electric shock or forced swimming

Other manipulations to create "animal models" of human diseases ranging from cancer to stroke to depression

Killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means

What types of animals are used?

Many different species are used around the world, but the most common include mice, fish, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, farm animals, birds, cats, dogs, mini-pigs, and non-human primates (monkeys, and in some countries, chimpanzees). Video: Watch what scientists have to say about alternatives to animal testing.

It is estimated that more than 115 million animals worldwide are used in laboratory experiments every year. But because only a small proportion of countries collect and publish data concerning animal use for testing and research, the precise number is unknown. For example, in the United States, up to 90 percent of the animals used in laboratories (purpose-bred rats, mice and birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates) are excluded from the official statistics, meaning that figures published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are no doubt a substantial underestimate.

Within the European Union, more than 12 million animals are used each year, with France, Germany and the United Kingdom being the top three animal using countries. British statistics reflect the use of more than 3 million animals each year, but this number does not include animals bred for research but killed as "surplus" without being used for specific experimental procedures. Although these animals still endure the stresses and deprivation of life in the sterile laboratory environment, their lives are not recorded in official statistics. HSI believes that complete transparency about animal use is vital and that all animals bred, used or killed for the research industry should be included in official figures. See some animal use statistics.

What's wrong with animal testing?

For nearly a century, drug and chemical safety assessments have been based on laboratory testing involving rodents, rabbits, dogs, and other animals. Aside from the ethical issues they pose-inflicting both physical pain as well as psychological distress and suffering on large numbers of sentient creatures-animal tests are time- and resource-intensive, restrictive in the number of substances that can be tested, provide little understanding of how chemicals behave in the body, and in many cases do not correctly predict real-world human reactions. Similarly, health scientists are increasingly questioning the relevance of research aimed at "modelling" human diseases in the laboratory by artificially creating symptoms in other animal species.

Trying to mirror human diseases or toxicity by artificially creating symptoms in mice, dogs or monkeys has major scientific limitations that cannot be overcome. Very often the symptoms and responses to potential treatments seen in other species are dissimilar to those of human patients. As a consequence, nine out of every 10 candidate medicines that appear safe and effective in animal studies fail when given to humans. Drug failures and research that never delivers because of irrelevant animal models not only delay medical progress, but also waste resources and risk the health and safety of volunteers in clinical trials.

What's the alternative?

If lack of human relevance is the fatal flaw of "animal models," then a switch to human-relevant research tools is the logical solution. The National Research Council in the United States has expressed its vision of "a not-so-distant future in which virtually all routine toxicity testing would be conducted in human cells or cell lines", and science leaders around the world have echoed this view.

The sequencing of the human genome and birth of functional genomics, the explosive growth of computer power and computational biology, and high-speed robot automation of cell-based (in vitro) screening systems, to name a few, has sparked a quiet revolution in biology. Together, these innovations have produced new tools and ways of thinking that can help uncover exactly how chemicals and drugs disrupt normal processes in the human body at the level of cells and molecules. From there, scientists can use computers to interpret and integrate this information with data from human and population-level studies. The resulting predictions regarding human safety and risk are potentially more relevant to people in the real world than animal tests.

But that's just the beginning. The wider field of human health research could benefit from a similar shift in paradigm. Many disease areas have seen little or no progress despite decades of animal research. Some 300 million people currently suffer from asthma, yet only two types of treatment have become available in the last 50 years. More than a thousand potential drugs for stroke have been tested in animals, but only one of these has proved effective in patients. And it's the same story with many other major human illnesses. A large-scale re-investment in human-based (not mouse or dog or monkey) research aimed at understanding how disruptions of normal human biological functions at the levels of genes, proteins and cell and tissue interactions lead to illness in our species could advance the effective treatment or prevention of many key health-related societal challenges of our time.

Modern non-animal techniques are already reducing and superseding experiments on animals, and in European Union, the "3Rs" principle of replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments is a legal requirement. In most other parts of the world there is currently no such legal imperative, leaving scientists free to use animals even where non-animal approaches are available.

If animal testing is so unreliable, why does it continue?

Despite this growing evidence that it is time for a change, effecting that change within a scientific community that has relied for decades on animal models as the "default method" for testing and research takes time and perseverance. Old habits die hard, and globally there is still a lack of knowledge of and expertise in cutting-edge non-animal techniques.

But with HSI's help, change is happening. We are leading efforts globally to encourage scientists, companies and policy-makers to transition away from animal use in favour of 21st century methods. Our work brings together experts from around the globe to share knowledge and best practice, improving the quality of research by replacing animals in the laboratory.

Are animal experiments needed for medical progress?

It is often argued that because animal experiments have been used for centuries, and medical progress has been made in that time, animal experiments must be necessary. But this is missing the point. History is full of examples of flawed or basic practices and ideas that were once considered state-of-the-art, only to be superseded years later by something far more sophisticated and successful. In the early 1900's, the Wright brothers' invention of the airplane was truly innovative for its time, but more than a century later, technology has advanced so much that when compared to the modern jumbo jet those early flying machines seem quaint and even absurd. Those early ideas are part of aviation history, but no-one would seriously argue that they represent the cutting-edge of design or human achievement. So it is with laboratory research. Animal experiments are part of medical history, but history is where they belong. Compared to today's potential to understand the basis of human disease at cellular and molecular levels, experimenting on live animals seems positively primitive. So if we want better quality medical research, safer more effective pharmaceuticals and cures to human diseases, we need to turn the page in the history books and embrace the new chapter-21st century science.

Independent scientific reviews demonstrate that research using animals correlates very poorly to real human patients. In fact, the data show that animal studies fail to predict real human outcomes in 50 to 99.7 percent of cases. This is mainly because other species seldom naturally suffer from the same diseases as found in humans. Animal experiments rely on often uniquely human conditions being artificially induced in non-human species. While on a superficial level they may share similar symptoms, fundamental differences in genetics, physiology and biochemistry can result in wildly different reactions to both the illness and potential treatments. For some areas of disease research, overreliance on animal models may well have delayed medical progress rather than advanced it. By contrast, many non-animal replacement methods such as cell-based studies, silicon chip biosensors, and computational systems biology models, can provide faster and more human-relevant answers to medical and chemical safety questions that animal experiments cannot match.

"The claim that animal experimentation is essential to medical development is not supported by proper, scientific evidence but by opinion and anecdote. Systematic reviews of its effectiveness don't support the claims made on its behalf" (Pandora Pound et al. British Medical Journal 328, 514-7, 2004).

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The term "animal testing" refers to procedures performed on living animals for purposes of research into basic biology and diseases, assessing the effectiveness of new medicinal products, and testing the human health and/or environmental safety of consumer and industry products such as cosmetics, household cleaners, food additives, pharmaceuticals and industrial/agro-chemicals.

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The use of animals in experiments is so endemic that "guinea pig" is used as an alternative term for "test subject." But underlying this ubiquity is a set of processes that harm animals unnecessarily: rats force-fed drugs designed to induce tumors, monkeys kept in tiny cages with chemicals irritating their skin and beagles euthanized without any anesthesia.

Critics say many of these experiments are unreliable and even unnecessary. Advocates for reduced animal testing earned a win in December 2022: the FDA announced that it would no longer require animal tests prior to approving a drug for human trials.

What Is Animal Testing?

Animal testing, sometimes called in vivo testing, is a process of determining if certain medications, vaccines and cosmetics are safe for humans by first experimenting with them on animals. Animal testing is common in most countries and has been used in some forms throughout much of human history.

Cosmetic Testing

Cosmetic testing is a process of using animals to test any cosmetic product before human use, such as makeups, lotions, creams, fragrances, oils or facial masks.

Testing for Medicine

Medical testing involves using animals to examine new drugs, research biological systems, investigate genetic factors, delve into animal psychologies or test out surgical strategies. Nowadays, drugs are the most common form of medical testing on animals.

The History of Animal Testing

Animal testing is a long-documented practice, with some of the oldest instances dating back to around 300 B.C. in ancient Greece. Yet while animal testing was widespread in the form of vivisection and practice for operations, it wasn't until the 20th century that medicines were commonly tested on animals. In fact, several laws were passed in this period, including the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in the U.S., that encouraged or mandated the use of animals in testing before human consumption.

What Types of Animals Are Used in Animal Testing?

Invertebrates

Common invertebrates used in animal testing include fruit flies and nematode worms. Unfortunately for these animals, no federal protections exist to minimize their pain or suffering in the U.S.

Vertebrates

There's truth in the common phrase "lab rat" - 95 percent of animals used in animal testing are mice or rats. Dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys, other primates, rabbits and sheep are all used in addition to rodents.

How Many Animals Are Used in Experiments Each Year?

This is a difficult question to answer, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture only counts certain species of animals in its annual review of animal testing. Mice and rats specifically bred for testing purposes are not counted because they do not fall under the U.S. Animal Welfare Act.

However, it's been estimated that at least 50 million animals are used in the U.S. every year. The real number is unknown and may be higher. Worldwide, exact numbers are unknown, but some estimate the number to be around 200 million experiments per year.

What's Wrong With Animal Testing?

Is Animal Testing Painful?

Some researchers attempt to reduce the pain for animal test subjects, but many do not. According to the USDA animal usage summary report, roughly 8 percent of animals were experimented on with no measures taken to ensure pain reduction. This report does not take into account animals that do not fall under the Animal Welfare Act, so the real number is unknowable and likely much higher.

Even animals protected by the Animal Welfare Act are often subjected to levels of pain that are hard to comprehend. Of all surgeries on animals, 40 percent do not report using anesthesia, and drugs are often force-fed to animals. Animals are also often killed after the experiments are completed, long before the end of their natural lifespan.

Are Animal Testing Results Reliable?

Animal tests do not catch all possible side effects before drugs move to a later phase of testing. According to a 2004 report from the USDA, 92 percent of medicines that pass an animal testing phase will not proceed to market, and a major cause of this failure is safety problems that were not predicted by animal tests. More recent reports from scientists estimate an even higher number of 96 percent.

There are a variety of reasons why animal tests are considered unreliable. According to a 2015 review in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, these include the effects of laboratory conditions; the different ways that diseases impact animals and humans; and the differences in physiology and genetics across species, all of which lead to inaccuracies. Due to such factors, a breakthrough meta-analysis published in Alternatives to Laboratory Animals in 2015 argued that a lack of toxicity of a drug in any of the five species most commonly used in animal testing - dogs, rats, mice, rabbits and monkeys - was not able to indicate the likelihood of a similar lack of toxicity in humans. In other words, animal tests don't work.

Advocates for animal testing often argue that the complexity of a living organism - the organs, circulatory system and genetic regulation - will affect drugs in a way that single tissue samples cannot. This argument fails to account for the fact that nonhuman systems are very different from human systems, which leads to inaccuracy.

Animal testing can also lead to banning drugs that would benefit humans. For example, tamoxifen, a drug used to treat breast cancer, can cause tumors in rodents. If this drug had been tested on animals in early phases of research, it is likely the benefits of tamoxifen would have remained untapped.

Is Animal Testing Cruel?

Due to the combination of low accuracy and high amounts of pain, it is difficult to argue that animal testing is not cruel. Animals such as rats, mice, dogs and chimpanzees are burned, poisoned, crippled, starved or abused in other ways via drugs, confinement or other invasive procedures.

Animals like these are sensitive to pain, emotionally empathetic and capable of forming social bonds. But to the researchers in charge of them, they are nothing more than tools.

Is Animal Testing Archaic?

Due to the inaccuracy of animal testing, voices have arisen to criticize its outdated methodology. Not only is animal testing an old-fashioned practice that hasn't been brought into the 21st century, but evidence shows it is likely holding back medical research.

Is Animal Testing Wasteful?

Because of the inaccuracy of animal testing, many scientists and experts argue that its existence is inherently wasteful. British doctor Ian Roberts writes that "biased or imprecise results from animal experiments may result in clinical trials of biologically inert or even harmful substances, thus . . . wasting scarce research resources."

Is Animal Testing Illegal?

Cosmetics testing has been banned in 42 countries and 10 U.S. states (California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Louisiana, New York and Virginia). New York's ban on cosmetic testing goes into effect in January 2023, which makes it possible that more states will continue to follow their lead.

No countries currently ban medical animal testing, but this may soon change. This year, Switzerland held a referendum on medical animal testing. A large Swiss pharmaceutical lobby campaigned against the initiative, which was ultimately unsuccessful. But the fact that animal testing went from untouchable fact to subject of a national debate sparks doubt about its continued acceptance in the future.

Aren't There Laws To Protect Animals Used in Experiments?

There do exist some laws to protect animals, such as the U.S. Animal Welfare Act. However, this law does very little to protect animals from pain, and doesn't even count rats and mice as protected animals.

Cosmetic testing is far more controversial in the public sphere and therefore more heavily regulated. It is almost entirely banned in the European Union and other countries, including Guatemala, Colombia, India, Taiwan and the U.K. The U.S. has no federal cosmetics ban.

Why Are Animals Still Used in Experiments?

Despite the lack of sustained evidence for animal testing's usefulness, and the possibility of cheaper alternatives (as discussed below), animal testing seems to be used far more often than it should be. Why?

First of all, the pharmaceutical industry has maintained a clear interest in preserving animal testing, and only very rarely review evidence about its actual usefulness. Another issue is scientific tradition and established practice. Scientists are likely to cite historical precedent as a reason for selecting an animal model, as opposed to the model's similarity to human systems or effectiveness in predicting toxicity, according to a 2019 paper in Alternatives to Animal Experimentation.

Should Animal Testing Be Banned?

Calls to ban animal testing because of its ineffectiveness and cruelty have been getting louder in recent years. Entire conferences are held to discuss alternatives to animal testing, and many petitions and campaigns are igniting across the world. These voices don't just originate from the animal liberation movement, either. Prominent scientists, pharmaceutical bosses and concerned citizens are joining the chorus.

Alternatives to Animal Testing

Thankfully, there exist several alternatives to animal testing, some of which have become more popular and common in recent years.

In Vitro Testing

In vitro testing is a process of conducting an examination in a test tube using tissue samples.

Human Tissues

Real human tissue samples, which can be ethically donated to science as a result of surgeries or after death, are viable alternatives for testing localized drugs. For years, research has indicated that various in vitro methods can hypothetically outperform animal testing (and cost less too), although this form of testing is likely best used for understanding toxicity within a single organ or organ system, not the entire human body.

A new human tissue testing method has emerged recently that shows promise. An in vitro skin testing model called h-CLAT recently entered use in Europe and Japan, paving the way for more techniques that don't require animal experimentation.

In Vitro Modeling Systems

Another form of in vitro testing involves a synthetic model that can replicate human systems. While less accurate, this method is cheaper and far easier to source, although it is best used for simpler human organs like the skin. One example, the EpiDerm technology, is already widespread for cosmetic purposes. This method is currently not used for large-scale medicinal approval, but instead to test if certain people are at risk for certain diseases.

Computer Modeling

Of all the alternatives, scientists are most excited about computer modeling techniques. Advanced computer modeling, sometimes called in silica testing, can create complex models of human body systems, even accounting for irregularities like prior diseases, as well as a vast array of genetic and demographic information.

And they work better than animal models. A 2018 study found an accuracy rate of between 89 percent and 96 percent, while a 2017 study estimated the accuracy rate of one method of analysis at 96 percent: in both studies the computer models beat the animal testing experiments.

Research Using Human Volunteers

Using human volunteers seems a bit dystopian, but science has progressed a long way since the unethical days of the 20th century. For starters, in some recent drug testing human volunteers only receive a microdose of the drug and are monitored in the presence of medical professionals to ensure safety. This microdosing method is promising, but still needs more research. Other forms of human volunteer research include the safe use of fMRI imaging, which has been shown to be very effective.

Of course, ethics regarding human volunteers are critical. Scientists and researchers must take great caution not to compel participants into doing something unsafe and must mitigate risks as much as possible. Using human volunteers is also best done after one other method, like computer modeling, has been completed to mitigate risk.

Animal Testing Facts and Statistics

The majority of animals used in animal testing are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act because they are rats or mice.

Rats have great memories and demonstrate empathy for other animals.

Every year, the NIH spends nearly $20 billion on animal testing-based research.

A majority of Americans disapprove of the continued use of animal testing.

What You Can Do

Consumers who want to avoid products tested on animals can look for a "vegan" or "cruelty-free" label when purchasing cosmetic products. They can also voice their support for policies to improve animal welfare in the medical industry like the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which passed the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

Animal Rights: The Simple Idea That Sparked a Movement How Airlines Enable Animal Suffering COVID-19 Exposing Flawed Moral Framework Behind Animal Testing

Björn Ólafsson

Björn Jóhann Ólafsson is an Icelandic-American writer who examines the psychology of eating animals, the environmental footprint of the meat industry, and the plant-based meat industry. He lives in Spain with his two lovebirds.

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The use of animals in experiments is so endemic that "guinea pig" is used as an alternative term for "test subject." But underlying this ubiquity is a set of processes that harm animals unnecessarily: rats force-fed drugs designed to induce tumors, monkeys kept in tiny cages with chemicals irritating their skin and beagles euthanized without any anesthesia.

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Animal testing has had an influential role in almost every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years. Further, animals are essential in assessing drugs and vaccine safety. Approximately 26 million animals are used in the USA every year for research purposes. Drug Discovery utilizes animal models to test toxicity and safety, but, some still may wonder what are the benefits of animal testing and why do we need animals in research? In this article, we'll explain the advantages that animal models provide to research, and how alternative models can be utilized.

Why Do We Use Animals In Research Testing?

Animal research has provided us with the ability to achieve life-changing discoveries through modern drugs, vaccines and various procedures. Testing on animals has saved and improved millions of lives. Animal testing has benefited researchers in understanding how to treat and prevent various conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, muscular dystrophy, and Parkinson's disease.

The fact that animals are needed can be explained by the complexity of the biochemical processes of humans. Using non-animal alternatives is useful, but it does not always provide the chance to study the interrelated pathways occurring inside humans. Also, many regulatory agencies require that animal models be used to test specific aspects of the experimental drug.

Various conditions such as high blood pressure and blindness cannot be tested using cell cultures due to the participation of multiple factors in pathogenesis. Even when using the most powerful simulations, it is not always possible to accurately simulate cell functions.

Additionally, there are many genetic similarities between some animals and humans. In fact, humans are 98% genetically similar to mice. This similarity allows for accurate testing on similar genes. Furthermore, many diseases are shared between animals and humans, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Because animals have a shorter life cycle than humans, scientists are able to study animals within their lifespan, shortening experimental times.

What Are The Benefits of Animal Testing?

Research on animal models has advanced the understanding and development of clinical and medical sciences. Correspondingly, it has directed the discovery of practically every single sort of treatment, such as drugs and surgery. For example, guinea pigs and frogs were heroes in the process of inventing asthma inhalers. Meningitis C cases are now rare, going down to 700 cases per year through the last decade, thanks to the animal models that were used during the research process. Today, 8 out of 10 pediatric cases of acute lymphocytic leukemia will have an average 5-year survival rate, compared to 25 years ago, when 70% of kids who had the disease died within 5 years. Likewise, kidney, heart, and other organ transplants advances, and immunosuppressant therapies, were all developed using animal models.

Animals can also benefit from animal research as well. Animals and humans have many shared conditions, diseases, and genes. These shared properties are now well understood and can be cured in both. Most veterinary drugs are based on similar drugs used by humans. For instance, diabetes studies in dogs and rabbits were performed to explore the option of treatment with insulin. Today, insulin is a major treatment for many conditions in animals.

Ethical Research

Animal research does bring up the topic of ethical research. This concern can be related to the experiments themselves or the housing conditions of the animal. Due to this ethical concern, more researchers and regulatory bodies are moving towards the 3Rs Principle. The 3Rs of animal research are Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. These statements are devoted to greatly reducing the amount of animals used for testing and animal distress. It is considered a systematic approach to animal testing.

One of the most common ways to practice the 3Rs Principle involves using alternative models for research. Alternative models are scientific models that researchers can use to study toxicity and efficacy of developing drugs, without involving the use of animals. A popular example of an alternative model that respects the 3R s Principle are zebrafish embryos. Zebrafish are a popular alternative model because they share many similarities with the human genome. Also, alternative models such as Zebrafish , are more cost-effective than animal models, and allow for higher testing throughput.

These days, the 3Rs are included in many international governing bodies that oversee Drug Development and animal testing. While animal testing is necessary, it is certainly both economically and ethically beneficial to seek out alternative models and 3Rs practices.

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Benefits of Animal Testing: How Ethical Testing Aids Research

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Animal testing has had an influential role in almost every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years. Further, animals are essential in assessing drugs and vaccine safety. Approximately 26 million animals are used in the USA every year for research purposes.

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Scientists use animals to learn more about health problems that affect both humans and animals, and to assure the safety of new medical treatments. Some of these problems involve processes that can only be studied in a living organism. Scientists study animals when there is no alternative and it is impractical or unethical to study humans.

Animals are good research subjects for a variety of reasons. They are biologically similar to humans and susceptible to many of the same health problems. Also, they have short life-cycles so they can easily be studied throughout their whole life-span or across several generations. In addition, scientists can control the environment around the animal (diet, temperature, lighting, etc.), which would be difficult to do with people. However, the most important reason why animals are used is that it would be wrong to deliberately expose human beings to health risks in order to observe the course of a disease.

Animals are needed in research to develop drugs and medical procedures to treat diseases. Scientists may discover such drugs and procedures using research methods that do not involve animals. If the new therapy seems promising, it is then tested in animals to see whether it seems to be safe and effective. If the results of the animal studies are favorable, human volunteers are asked to take part in a clinical trial. The animal studies are done first to give medical researchers a better idea of what benefits and complications they are likely to see in humans.

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Why Do Scientists Use Animals in Research

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Scientists use animals to learn more about health problems that affect both humans and animals, and to assure the safety of new medical treatments. Some of these problems involve processes that can only be studied in a living organism. Scientists study animals when there is no alternative and it is impractical or unethical to study humans.

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Introduction

Non-human animals are used in medical and other scientific research at academic institutions, hospitals, and in industries such pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Scientific research on animals helps develop antibiotics and other medications, as well as immunizations and surgical procedures. Animals are used in the testing of consumer products such as perfumes and shampoos. Animals are also used to educate students in biology, medicine, and related fields. We will call all such efforts "animal research."

Rats and mice are the main animals used, but also used are birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and other mammals. In the course of animal research many animals suffer discomfort, fear, and pain, and some animals die. Of course, many animals in the wild suffer and die also, hence the famous expression:

"nature red in tooth and claw."

Animal research is morally controversial. Many scientists just assume that it is morally permissible, but animal rights advocates claim that it is not.

Arguments For Animal Research

Humans use animals for their purposes and do so for the most part without thinking the practice needs moral justification. People have used and continue to use animals for transportation, farming, recreation, companionship, sport, and food.

Likewise the use of animals in research has occurred largely without researchers thinking they needed to morally justify this practice. But if a justification is thought to be needed, the main one given by supporters is that such research brings great benefit to humans, enough benefit to outweigh any possible animal suffering or sacrifice involved.

Furthermore, those who support animal research usually hold that most scientific results obtained through animal research are not available in any other way or that the use of animals in research is more effective than other possible methods that might be used to obtain this scientific knowledge.

Here is a sketch of some important claims assumed or given in support of animal research:

1. It is morally permissible for humans to use animals, that is, to raise them and keep them for our purposes, to do things with them and to them, and to make things out of them. For example, we may eat them, use them for clothing, use them for farm work, put them in service as guard animals and guide animals, use them as pets, do research on them, etc.

2. Animals have no right to life, no right to live their own lives, and no right not to be used for human purposes.

3. Any suffering endured by animals in research contexts is justified by the benefits to humans from such research.

4. Computer modeling and other study methods not involving animals would not be able to fully replace the use of animals in research because we would not gain as much knowledge by these other techniques.

In recent years there has been some discussion among ethicists about animal rights and how we should treat animals, and as a result we can add a few modifications or qualifications that those who support animal research usually now will concede:

1. Animals may have no right to life, but they deserve some sort of moral consideration that disallows some kinds of treatment of animals. For example, it would be wrong to torture animals for fun. If possible, they should be treated humanely and not made to suffer unnecessarily.

2. Controls should be in place to protect research animals from unnecessary harm (pain and suffering).

This modern qualified version of support for animal research grants animals some sort of moral consideration or moral status; some animal research advocates may go so far as to allow that animals have some limited moral rights. Most people grant that it would be wrong to make or allow an animal to suffer or torture an animal just to provide us with amusement or entertainment. This could be stated in terms of human moral obligations - we have a moral obligation not to torture animals - or in terms of animal rights - animals have the right not to be tortured. Also, there have been concerns during the last few decades that animals in zoos should be provided with better, more realistic habitats so that they have more of a life. None of this is taken to preclude scientific research, though it might complicate it, but it is now commonly recognized that steps should be taken by researchers, sometimes at significant cost to the research project, to treat research animals humanely and limit any suffering.

An example of a defender of a more or less traditional view supporting animal research is Carl Cohen. Cohen thinks that the tremendous benefit to humans from animal research outweighs any possible suffering on their part. Efforts are and should be made to prevent mistreatment of research animals. Cohen does not believe it makes sense to speak in terms of animals having moral rights, even limited rights not to be tortured, though Cohen would think it is wrong to torture animals. Cohen's view is that to have moral rights, a creature must have the capacity to have their own moral duties or engage in moral reflection or deliberation. While humans can do this, non-human animals cannot. Research animals therefore are not part of the moral community and can have no moral rights.

Animal Rights Advocacy

A position against traditional and more modern views supporting animal research is represented by diverse opponents we will group together as "animal rights advocates." Animal rights advocates often concede animal research has benefitted humans, though some advocates believe the benefit has been overblown and could have been provided in other ways. But on their view no benefit from animal research could make such research morally permissible.

A number of distinct views are held by animal rights advocates:

1. Animals are not on this earth to be used for human purposes. They have their own lives.

2. Animals have moral rights which are violated by using them for research or killing them for food or clothing.

3. Animals used in research are often mistreated, despite the presence of controls meant to prevent this.

4. Any human benefits through animal research are outweighed by the suffering of those animals.

5. Benefits from animal research are greatly exaggerated: many research results are insignificant or useless (because animals are not like humans, results are often inconclusive) or could have been obtained in other ways.

Utilitarianism and Animals

Probably the most important theoretical perspectives from animal rights advocates come from Peter Singer and Tom Regan.

One tradition in ethics is that when faced with several alternative courses of action, one should choose the course of action that will result in the greatest good or happiness for the greatest number. Versions of this tradition are called "utilitarianism."

One interpretation of utilitarianism interprets the "greatest number" to mean the greatest number of human beings. A different view of "greatest number," one represented by Singer, claims we should take into account not just human beings but any creature who can have conscious experience, feel happiness, and experience pain and suffering. In judging the rightness or wrongness of a practice, everyone's interests, happiness, pain, and suffering, including those of research animals, need to be taken into account.

What of the claim that research benefits to humans outweigh any possible suffering of research animals? According to Singer, the suffering of research animals is on par with that of humans, so for such research to be justified by future benefits, those future benefits would have to be able to justify it if the research were carried out on human infants. Only if the pain, suffering, and other harm to human infant research subjects were considered justified by future benefits would it be justified to use animals instead of infants. If one objects that human infants have greater potential than animals, and so should count for more or count in a more significant way, Singer suggests we consider whether we would do such research on brain-damaged infants who have no more intellectual potential than animals.

Singer and those who agree with him are not advocating we test new drugs on normal infants or brain-damaged infants instead of on non-human animals. They merely want to make us see that we have no real grounds to consider only the interests of humans and treat animal interests, happiness, and suffering as if they don't really matter. Singer considers the view that human lives and interests are preferable to animal lives and interests to be a prejudice, a prejudice of "speciesism" that he considers analogous to racism. Singer thinks we should consider speciesism wrong just as we consider racism wrong.

Singer at times speaks of animals as having rights. His view that animals have interests and can experience happiness, pain, and suffering is consistent with them having moral rights, but note that, traditionally, utilitarians think of moral rights as akin to "useful fictions" rather than ultimate "metaphysical" possessions of conscious beings.

Regan's Defense of Animal Rights

For Tom Regan, to say human beings have moral rights to life and liberty means others are not free to harm individuals or ordinarily interfere with their free choices. Why do humans have moral rights to life and liberty? Regan thinks it is because humans are subjects whose lives matter to them; a human being is (in his terms) a "subject-of-a-life."

But then, Regan notes, nonhuman animals are likewise subjects-of-a-life. Nonhuman animals are aware of what happens to them and what happens to them matters to them. Their lives can go "better or worse for them." They are subjects, not just objects, and one can say in the case of a nonhuman animal there is "somebody there." So, according to Regan, like humans, nonhuman animals have moral rights to life and liberty.

Regan holds that the use of animals in research violates their moral rights. Subjecting an animal to suffering and death as part of scientific research violates the animal's rights to life and to live that life in a way meaningful to the animal. Their rights "trump" any purported justification of animal research as benefitting humans.

Regan is suspicious of the common claim that human benefits justify animal suffering anyway. No one has ever worked out any kind of intelligible methodology that would enable one to compare benefits to one species with the harm to another species so as to show the former outweighed the latter. The usual assumption seems to be that the suffering of an animal counts for less than the suffering of a human, but Regan questions this.

Issues in the Dispute

The controversy between the views supporting animal research and the view of animal rights advocates involves disputes about both factual (empirical) and moral issues. Disputed factual issues include:

whether scientific results obtained through animal research are significant

whether the same or similar results could have been obtained through other means, and

whether effective controls are in place to protect research animals from mistreatment.

Moral issues include:

the moral status and moral rights, if any, possessed by nonhuman animals, and

whether research animal suffering is justified in light of the benefits of such research to humans.

This latter issue has empirical aspects too, because it involves answering factual questions of how much suffering occurs to research animals and how much humans really benefit from animal research.

A thorough discussion of all these issues is too much for this introduction, but the following comments on some of the issues may help you decide on your position on the morality of animal research.

Factual issues: It seems beyond argument that the use of animals in medical research has benefitted humans in many ways, for example in developing immunizations for measles and polio, in the development of antibiotics, and in the development of surgical techniques such as organ transplants and joint replacements. Developed through animal research, vaccines for rabies and distemper have benefitted family pets as well. It's hard to imagine all this being done by computer modeling, and in fact much of this was done before computers were commonly available. But it is worth considering whether, going forward, for some kinds of research more use of testing by means other than on animals might be just as effective.

In the context of research in the United States, controls are in place or being put into place to try to minimize animal suffering. Whether or not these controls are fully effective and optimal is open to debate. In this regard research seems to have come a long way from practices of decades ago, but we may need to police current policies better or put in place more stringent ones.

Moral issues: The moral issue of whether human benefit justifies animal suffering and sacrifice itself has both moral and factual aspects:

what constitutes human benefit (moral) and how to quantify that (factual)

how to value the life of a research animal (moral)

what constitutes animal suffering and sacrifice (moral) and how to quantify that (factual), and

how to compare benefits and sacrifices across species (moral and factual).

Regan is correct that the math of any "justification equation" is rarely even discussed, much less spelled out in any noncontroversial fashion. In other words, there is no clear way to precisely quantify the suffering of research animals and compare this amount to a calculated quantity of human benefit to see if one outweighs the other.

In another respect, some people might seem confused about the issue of justification itself, sometimes assuming no justification is needed and yet at other times thinking animal research is justified by human benefit, as if justification were needed.

Obviously a key moral issue in the dispute is the precise moral status of nonhuman animals. The moral status of something is whether the thing is a moral agent and/or a moral patient, whether it has moral rights, and if not whether it deserves some other sort of moral consideration. For most people the sense of moral patiency possessed by such animals is very limited and gives them limited rights. They may have the right not to be harmed for fun. (But not everyone who believes this would be comfortable talking of such animals as possessing rights. They might be more comfortable saying such animals deserve some moral consideration.)

Animal rights advocates of course would be comfortable with the view that animals are full-blown moral patients; Regan claims they have a right to life. Animal right advocates just disagree here with Cohen that animals are not part of the moral community. They are not moral agents, but they are moral patients.

Why do some things have a different moral status than do other things? It might be that we implicitly base the moral status of something on some physical or metaphysical feature of that thing. So for instance human beings are thought to have moral rights to life and liberty while trees do not because humans are conscious, rational, can express wishes and desires, have their lives matter to them, have an interest in their futures, etc. (physical features in the broad sense - including mental), while the same cannot be said of trees. Or human persons have immaterial souls (metaphysical features) while trees do not. Or animals are considered to be subjects (a metaphysical category), just as humans are.

Regan thinks the moral status of a thing depends on it being the subject of a life, having a future that matters to it. Regan's type of view tends to see things as black or white. If it is the subject of a life, it has the moral right to life, otherwise not.

To be consistent we should grant the same moral status to creatures that are relevantly similar physically or metaphysically, depending on what it is we think that grounds moral status. Aliens from another planet who acted like human beings in certain essential ways might be given a similar moral status, though they were not human. However, one could argue that moral status comes in degrees and is not absolute in the way Regan thinks.

Another consideration is whether the moral status of a being could be overridden by other factors. So, for example, one might claim that nonhuman animals deserve a certain kind of moral treatment but in the case of crucially important research trying to save human lives that status can be overridden.

Carl Cohen and Tom Regan, The Animal Rights Debate
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Tom Regan, Empty Cages

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Non-human animals are used in medical and other scientific research at academic institutions, hospitals, and in industries such pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Scientific research on animals helps develop antibiotics and other medications, as well as immunizations and surgical procedures. Animals are used in the testing of consumer products such as perfumes and shampoos.

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What have humans gained from animal testing? Are we getting closer to finding a cure for HIV, cancer, and other diseases through animal experiments? These 11 animal testing statistics will help you understand how animal experiments (don't) work and what we're (not) getting out of them.

1. Each year, more than 110 million animals-including mice, frogs, dogs, rabbits, monkeys, fish, and birds-are killed in U.S. laboratories.

Experimenters force animals to inhale toxic fumes, immobilize them in restraint devices, drill holes into their skulls, mutilate their brains, and burn their skin and eyes-and if the animals don't die in the process, they're killed afterward. Whether it's for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experiments, or chemical, drug, food, or cosmetics testing, these animals are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized.

2. Ninety-five percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials.

This stat comes straight from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-the government agency that funnels billions of our taxpayer dollars into these reckless experiments. NIH has noted that the drugs fail in humans because they either don't work or are dangerous. Because animal trials are so unreliable, they make human ones more risky.

3. Ninety-nine percent of the animals used in laboratories aren't covered by federal animal protection laws.

It's as if the government were saying, "I'm sorry, but you're just not animal enough" to the tens of millions of rats, mice, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians who constitute 99% of the animals used in laboratories yet are excluded by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and therefore denied even the most basic consideration. However, even animals who are supposedly "protected" under the AWA are still allowed to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, restrained, made addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No test-no matter how painful or trivial-is illegal. And pain relief isn't required.

4. Between 2010 and 2014, half a million animals covered under the AWA were subjected to painful experiments without pain relief.

Rabbits haven't received any pain relief in the Draize eye and skin irritation and corrosion tests since they started in the 1940s. In these tests, a substance is dripped into rabbits' eyes or smeared onto their shaved skin, leaving them to suffer from inflammation, ulcers, bleeding, irritated and cloudy eyes, blindness, redness, swelling, discharge, and hemorrhaging.

5. A 2009 survey found that mice and rats used in invasive, painful surgeries were only provided with post-operative pain relief about 20% of the time.

The survey found that mice and rats who were subjected to skull surgeries, burn experiments, spinal surgeries, and other horrors rarely received post-procedural pain relief. Imagine someone drilling open your skull to expose your brain but not giving you so much as an Advil.

6. More than 93% of experimental cancer drugs failed in the first phase of human clinical trials after testing "successfully" on animals.

The survey was based on nearly 4,500 cancer drugs developed between 2003 and 2011. Artificially inducing a condition in a healthy individual of a different species who is confined and isolated in stressful, unnatural conditions and then applying the results to naturally occurring diseases in humans is not only unethical but also ridiculous. Even animal experimenters acknowledge that the extreme distress that these animals endure jeopardizes the results.

We've been handicapped by the fact that we have been studying diseases in animals that don't really exist in animals. Mice ... don't get schizophrenia. They don't get Alzheimer's disease.

-Dr. Christer Nordstedt, Eli Lilly's vice president of neuroscience research

7. The chemicals that cause cancer in rats only cause it in mice 46% of the time.

If extrapolating from rats to mice is so unreliable, imagine the inefficiency of applying results from mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys to humans. Richard Klausner, former head of the National Cancer Institute, said, "The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn't work in humans."

8. One hundred HIV vaccines have been successful in animal experiments-100% of them failed to protect humans sufficiently.

In one case, an HIV vaccine that was shown to be effective in monkeys failed in human clinical trials because it didn't prevent people from developing AIDS, and some believe that it made them more susceptible to it. According to a report in The Independent, one conclusion was that "testing HIV vaccines on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work."

9. Every year in the U.S., NIH blows about 47% of research funding on animal experimentation.

Approximately 47% of NIH-funded research involves animals, and in 2020, the agency budgeted nearly $42 billion for research and development-that's $19.6 billion spent on animal experiments. But for what? Do you know of any cures for multiple sclerosis, West Nile virus, or muscular dystrophy? Well, there aren't any. A 2014 review paper co-authored by a Yale School of Medicine professor in The BMJ documented the overwhelming failure of experiments on animals to improve human health, concluding that "the public's continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced."

10. Currently, 52% of U.S. adults oppose the use of animals in scientific research.

A Pew Research Center poll found that the majority of American adults oppose the use of animals in scientific research, and other surveys suggest that the misguided folks who do support it only feel that way because they wrongly believe that it's necessary. In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed for animals rarely translated to humans and warned that "patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease ... poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected."

11. Since 2017, PETA has had nearly 150 victories for animals used in experiments.

Our victories include helping engineers develop a new ventilator for COVID-19 patients without animal testing, working with the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration to eliminate animal tests for health marketing claims for foods, persuading Suave to go cruelty-free, and getting pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb and others to ban near-drowning tests. PETA's work to end animal experiments-backed by the support of our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide-is saving countless animals.

*****

In NIH's most recent five-year plan, the agency stated that "animal models often fail to provide good ways to mimic disease or predict how drugs will work in humans, resulting in much wasted time and money while patients wait for therapies." Animal experiments are not a good indicator of drug responses in humans or any species other than the one being exploited. Penicillin is the backbone of human antibiotics, yet it kills guinea pigs! Aspirin kills cats and causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys, and morphine, a depressant in humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses.

All these animal testing statistics can be boiled down to just one: Animal experiments are speciesist-making them unacceptable 100% of the time. They don't work, and even if they did, they'd still be unacceptable. Torturing sensitive beings isn't OK, even if someone's pretending it's for science or medicine -it's as simple as that.

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11 Animal Testing Statistics The Will Blow Your Mind | PETA

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What have humans gained from animal testing? Are we getting closer to finding a cure for HIV, cancer, and other diseases through animal experiments? These 11 animal testing statistics will help you understand how animal experiments (don't) work and what we're (not) getting out of them.

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A list of and links to question and answer pages about animal testing.

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Laboratory Animal Welfare - Animal Research & Testing | RSPCA

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Find our more about the use of lab animals in experiments and research, and the importance of finding humane alternatives.

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Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in U.S. labs every year.

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Which animals are used?

A surprisingly, large range of animal species are regularly used in experiments, including wild animals.

Only vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, fish and amphibians) and some invertebrates such as octopuses are defined as "animals" by European legislation governing animal experiments. Shockingly, in the USA rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experiment regulations. That means no legal permission to experiment on them is needed and they are not included in any statistics.

Animals used in experiments are usually bred for this purpose by the laboratory or in breeding facilities. It's a cruel, multi-million dollar industry. We believe that all animals are equally important. A dog bred for research is still a dog who could otherwise live a happy life in a loving home.

Some monkeys are still trapped in the wild in Africa, Asia and South America to be used in experiments or imprisoned in breeding facilities. Their children are exported to laboratories around the world. The use of wild-caught monkeys in experiments is generally banned in Europe but is allowed elsewhere.

Horses and other animals such as cows, sheep and pigs are often supplied by dealers and may originate from racing stables or farms for use in animal experiments. The rules preventing the use of stray companion animals like dogs and cats vary from country to country.

Wild animals can be used in trapping and monitoring experiments in the wild, or they may be captured and brought into a laboratory setting for more invasive research, sometimes in the name of conservation.

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What is animal testing? | Cruelty Free International

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Animals used in laboratories are deliberately harmed, not for their own good, and are usually...

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By: Ian Murnaghan BSc (hons), MSc - Updated: 23 May 2023 | *Discuss

Although there are various references to animal testing prior to the nineteenth century, these are not well documented. The first major reference to animal testing occurred in the late nineteenth century when Louis Pasteur administered anthrax to sheep and showed the importance of vaccines with his germ theory. Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory in the mid 1850s also served to suggest that animals could serve as effective models to facilitate biological understanding in humans. Other cases of animal testing include psychological experiments such as the one by Ivan Pavlov in the late nineteenth century. He conducted experiments on dogs to demonstrate how dogs could be conditioned with regards to memory and repetitive tasks.

Animal Testing Breakthroughs

An enormous breakthrough came in 1922 when animal testing allowed for insulin to be isolated from dogs. Prior to this isolation, individuals with diabetes essentially 'wasted' away from the metabolic effects of uncontrolled high blood sugar. In the 1930s, modern anaesthetics and antibiotics were developed from the use of animal testing. In addition, anticoagulants and kidney dialysis, both life-saving treatments, were introduced following animal testing.

Continued Use of Animal Testing

It was also during this time that primate labs were set up. The 1950s saw animal testing aiding in the development of vaccines. The other developments related to animal testing that occurred throughout the rest of the century are too numerous to describe but include many potent cancer drugs as well as drugs for HIV that were developed in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. Also notorious was the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996. This cloning did, however, still bring much debate with it due to ethical dilemmas surrounding cloning. Animal testing peaked mostly during the 1980s and has since been on the decline. The decline is primarily due to increased regulations that make it more difficult to gain approval for animal testing. Another reason for the decline is from the introduction of animal testing alternatives where appropriate.

Initial Animal Testing Regulations

Britain's input into animal testing began quite early, with the Cruelty to Animals Act introduced in 1876, which was an attempt to regulate animal testing. Later, the Animals Scientific Procedures Act replaced it in 1986. There was still an earlier act although not specific to animal experimentation in general. Britain passed the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act in 1822 to prevent cruel and unnecessary treatment of cattle. Although not specific to animal testing, it did still signify the acknowledgment of animal cruelty and was an initial attempt to place parameters and consequences around poor treatment of animals.

Animal Testing on Cosmetics

Animal testing on cosmetics is still a relatively new concept, given that this type of testing only began in the first quarter of the twentieth century. After an incident where a woman's personal use of a mascara darkener went awry, leaving her with burning eyes and ultimately - blindness - the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) passed the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1938. Britain similarly conducted animal testing for cosmetics until outlawing all cosmetics related animal testing in 1998. The European Union has followed suit with an intended ban on animal testing for cosmetics to be performed by 2009. In the United States, Revlon and Avon were two of the first large companies to halt all cosmetics testing on animals. Some critics, however, have argued that the key ingredients in cosmetics formulations have already been tested on animals. Therefore, their safety is well established, which means that it's 'easier' for companies to find alternatives to test product formulations because most active ingredients have already been approved.

Moving Ahead

The timeline of animal testing clearly shows the scarce beginnings that soon increased, with a peak in the 1980s before declining until the current time. It is likely that the use of animals will either decrease or - at the very least - stabilise as alternatives are developed to animal testing. It is also expected that animal testing will yield additional breakthrough drugs, which offer improved quality of life and hope for people with some of the most devastating diseases today.

You might also like...

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animal testing timeline cosmetics britain active ingredients formulations approved agencies stopping dolly sheep dogs ivan pavlov charles darwin product united states critics revlon avon large approved cruelty animals act scientific procedures biological models vaccinations argued primate labs treatments kidney dialysis cancer safety federal food drug cattle cruel decline increase

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By: Ian Murnaghan BSc (hons), MSc - Updated: 23 May 2023 | *Discuss Although there are various references to animal testing prior to the nineteenth century, these are not well documented. The first major reference to animal testing occurred in the late nineteenth century when Louis Pasteur administered anthrax to sheep and showed the importance of vaccines with his germ theory.

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Imagine this event. A man named Bob ambles along the beach. He's celebrating- the year is 500 BC. Jesus hasn't yet come to save us all. Bob notices a monkey swinging on a vine. Bob marvels at the intricate details of the monkey's fingers and says, "Here, little fellow. Come. I have a banana for you."

An hour later, the monkey screeches in pain while Bob saws open its guts and pours scalding lamp oil into the open wound. That's how the history of animal testing might have started.

Some might argue that's not how animal tests happened. Bob might say he was doing it to advance medical anti-transplant rejection medications. The monkey died in sheer agony.

Since the Bob event, billions of live animals have died for medical research. We substitute animals for the human body. We use 26 million animals in the USA yearly to gain medical and biological knowledge.

Early History

Sorry about the graphic beginning. Someone should have stopped Bob back then and told him about animal rights. The ongoing debate how the massive contributions animal testing has had on developing life-saving methods and biomedical research is endless.

Proponents also believe that strict regulations prevent animal cruelty in animal laboratories and solve medical problems.

Team "Without Consent" also has a voice. They believe animals and humans are like apples and oranges. The gains made from animal testing don't offset the cost of animal cruelty. Believe it or not, the history of animal testing and arguments over it has existed since 2500 years ago.

Okay, it was probably a guy named Thadius who conducted the first animal scientific experiments back in Greece. Using live animal species, Thadius practiced vivisections. A polite way of saying scientific and medical experiments to see what's inside with a rusty saw. (Jeffery Dahmer also liked to cut things open.)

Scholars who study ancient Greek writings can validate that humans started the dissection of living animals and wrote the first chapter. Scholars like Aristotle conducted live animal experiments to examine how living organisms work.

This inhumane animal research had its defenders. Aristotle didn't believe animals were smart enough to understand injustice or pain.

At that time, no one had qualms about using criminals for live human experiments. Early human rights activists in Rome and Alexandria proposed prohibitions to end using humans. Theophrastus, Aristotle's replacement, also had a different opinion - 'causing pain to animals was an affront to the gods.' [ source]

Galen (130-200 AD), another forerunner of medicine whose theories remained popular into the 15th Century, took it a step further. He conducted his animal experiments, including the dissection of an elephant, and other animals, in front of a live studio audience.

Galen used his animal vivisection to further human knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology vol. Galen is famous for proving that arteries contain blood, not air.

He also believed humans and animals were similar. Yet he had no feelings for the animals he cut open. His T-shirt would have read: "Without Pity or Compassion."

Galen also shared this wisdom with his students: "the unpleasing expression of the ape when it's being vivisected was to be expected." Chapter two of the history of animal testing.

Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) was another Arab physician without a heart who introduced animal testing as an experimental method to test surgical processes before using them on humans.

Wouldn't it be something to go back in time and prevent Bob or Thadius from making that first cut into animal flesh? If someone had stopped them, the history of animal testing would be much shorter.

Live animal models became the tools that early physician scientists used to learn how the body works on the inside. Animal experiments also played a vital role in studying medicine, biology, and living organisms.

It worked so well that these men kept going deeper. They gained knowledge about the circulatory system and toxicity testing protocols.

Renowned men at the time, like William Harvey and Johan Wepfer, became masters in conducting animal experiments for the benefit of science. By the 18th Century, a somewhat famous philosopher named Kant said, "Hey guys, I think what you're doing is cruel to animals and could spread to cruelty toward humans."

Voltaire, Rousseau, and Schopenhouser didn't think this form of animal cruelty as a means to an end was proper. While the French philosopher Descartes had this stunning philosophy: "Since animals can't rationally express emotion, their suffering is irrelevant if it's for the betterment of humankind."

Animal Testing in the 1800s and Early 1900s

In the mid-1800s, organizations were formed to stop vivisection. The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) began in 1866. However, they had a challenging road ahead. It would take another 100 years before two books finally helped to drive change.

One of the strongest threads defending animal experimentation harkens back to Claude Bernard. As a physiologist, Bernard established animal experimentation as ethical. It was, after all, for the benefit of medicine and human life.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, life was difficult for people. Poverty ruled. Child labor was normal. People struggled to survive. In England, people slowly started to change how they felt about domestic animals.

They began to adopt pets and slowly voiced their concerns regarding vivisection. In 1875, the Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection joined.

This anti-vivisection movement and anti-animal testing practices soon received a welcome spokesperson in Queen Victoria. The Queen was appalled by what she heard. Soon the first laws to help stop animal use for research became Great Britain's Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876

Despite this giant leap forward, scientists worldwide continued to submit animals to horrific experiments. Weird and unnecessarily cruel experiments like inserting glass tubes into a dog's salivary glans or implanting a cow's ear on a mouse happened as recently as 1997.

Fundamental global legislation to reform animal experimentation didn't happen until 1992. The book, "The Principles of Humane Experimental Techniques," dug into new theories about animal experimentation. It was the birth of the policies that regulate modern practices.

In Medicine

We have a billion animals to thank for giving their lives to science, biomedical research, multi-drug antibiotic treatments, and complex surgical operations without consent.

The list in which animals contributed to scientific breakthroughs is long. The conundrum keeps the debate in full swing and sheds light on the historical perspective.

Emil von Behring used guinea pigs to save humanity from diphtheria toxin. The diphtheria antitoxins saved millions of lives. It also slowed the anti-vivisection movement in the early 20th Century. Today, the Iditarod still commemorates this medical victory.

To cure diabetes, Frederich Banting used dogs and bovine to perform experiments for solving the riddle of pancreatic secretion. He went on to revolutionize medicine by inventing insulin.

Guinea pigs contributed to the discovery of streptomycin to cure tuberculosis. Waksman, Hinshaw, and Feldman undoubtedly saved millions of TB patients from death. Pigs were also used to make heart valve replacements, pre-treated with glutaraldehyde to blunt immune response.

Polio crippled and killed millions before Jonas Salk isolated the polio virus in an experiment using rhesus monkey kidney cells and opened the way to polio vaccine development. It virtually eradicated polio in the US by 1965. Note: the poliovirus does not exist or spread among animals.

Lithium salts, an infamous drug developed through Cade's animal testing that replaced lobotomies and electro-convulsive therapy, also got help from guineas. Lithium revolutionized mental health to treat recurrent mania.

Anesthetics also owe their success to animal hosts like dogs, cats, rabbits, rodents, and monkeys. Without safer drugs, modern surgery wouldn't exist.

Dogs have our hearts, literally. Dogs played a vital role in pioneering heart valve replacement surgery. Although Starr made the breakthrough in 1960, over 300,000 patients still use the Starr valve.

Armadillos grow the bacteria used to treat leprosy, which is still a health concern in Brazil, Tanzania, Nepal, India, Madagascar, and Mozambique. Although attempted trials to culture the bacteria in vitro occur, only mice and armadillos are reliable sources.

AIDS research, using HIV-2, SHIV, and SIV, with Old World Monkey Macaques is ongoing. Because of the complexity of the AIDS virus, drug studies in nonhuman primates drive advances in scientific knowledge.

The twentieth Century is the pinnacle of human medical advances to cure human diseases. However, transplants, medications, and vaccines can be traced back to animal testing.

Research using living animals instead of human patients to solve Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis, spinal cord injury, and others continues. There are also colossal failures and reasons why animal experimentation must stop.

Animals in Space and the Military

Send them to the moon. The USA sent a whole cast of animal astronauts into space. None had a return ticket. Space scientists used animals like monkeys to test prolonged weightlessness.

The first barrel of monkeys died in an unmanned flight in the 1940s. The first monkey to survive his space mission died a few hours after landing.

The Russians sent Laika to orbit the earth. The stray dog died of overheating and panic. What most people don't know about the tragic events of the space shuttle Columbia is that alongside the seven crew who died, two thousand 'disposable' test animals also perished.

Military

The US Department of Defense uses animals for research and combat trauma training. For example, anesthetized goats and pigs receive gunshot wounds, burns, and amputations to train military medics. As many as 488,237 unwilling animals became part of this program.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatments of Animals) was instrumental in a Congress decision to urge the Pentagon to end live tissue training. The Coast Guard, however, has no plans to terminate the program despite being at the forefront of the 2012 scandal.

Science Advances

Tenacious people have long deliberated on the cruelty of animal testing. A modern Australian philosopher (Peter Singer) encapsulated animal liberation in 1975 by saying it was speciesism which he likened to racism, sexism, and discrimination.

Singer was confident that one-day society would face the horror we unleashed with animal experimentation.

Science hasn't been kind to animals. Early on, PETA broke the rules and shocked the world with an iconic photograph of a monkey restrained for experiments. A veterinarian infected cats (with feline AIDS virus) to study methamphetamine users with symptoms of AIDS.

But there is progress. The National Academy of Sciences is looking toward ending animal testing and switching to human cells in vitro. Don't applaud yet. While the idea is new (2007), it will take decades to stop animal testing and further advances in mirroring metabolism methods.

There was a time when monkeys wore lipstick and perfume to test cosmetics. In 2013, the voices of people finally reached an impasse when the European Union banned cosmetic products that contained ingredients tested on animals.

Many lamented that it would derail the development of the beauty industry. It didn't. India and Israel followed. Beautiful American women still smear animal-tested creams and lotions on their skin.

Mandatory animal experimentation continues for cosmetics testing in China to this day. Restrictions on shampoo, perfumes, and other non-special items were lifted in 2014. A change in ordinary cosmetics ( excluding anti-aging) was seen in 2021. Sometimes human logic is astonishing.

The US National Institutes of Health retired most of its bred chimpanzees in 2013. The argument over which chimps and how many to keep locked up for further experiments concerning critical vaccines and treatments isn't going to help the chimps. Then came COVID-19, and vaccines without animal testing hit the market.

Similarly, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is mandating plans to reduce mammal testing by 30% as of 2025. Mammal testing will ultimately end by 2035. The FDA, the NIH, and VA have adopted similar policies.

Another victory for animals came in September 2021 when Mexico joined the list of countries to ban cosmetic testing on animals.

Veterinary Advances

Animal testing to save animals is a small portion. Only about 5% of research into animal health relies on using animals. Animal studies played a crucial role in the treatment of the following animal diseases:

Anthrax

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV)

Heartworm (other parasitic infections)

Glanders

Rabies

Swine fever

Texas cattle fever

Tuberculosis

Animal Testing and Covid-19

COVID-19 helped change the trajectory of mandatory animal testing for vaccines. The global pandemic demanded fast action and results obtained. Although medical sciences relied on animals to test efficacy and safety, labs ran into a giant wall.

There weren't enough genetically modified mice or monkeys. So companies clamored to find new development techniques. Instead of animal guinea pigs (mice), Moderna

Therapeutics went straight to medical testing on humans and used a synthetic copy of the virus genetic code. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved Moderna's clinical trials.

Thinking outside the box, scientists who typically rely on monkeys (like pink-faced rhesus macaques) looked for other ways to find a cure. COVID-19 shut down the import of monkeys from China.

Researchers quickly developed a successful vaccine program without testing on animals. It's safe to say they used willing recipients in human trials.

Regulatory Authorities

There's a fine line between animals protected by the AWA (Animal Welfare Act) passed in 1966 (amended in 1970, 1976, 1985).

The AWA definition of an animal means any living or dead dog, cat, monkey, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or warm-blooded animal. The giant loophole excludes birds, rats, and mice bred for research, cold-blooded animals, and farm animals like cows, pigs, and chickens.

Rules state that any research facility must form a committee with three or more members. One member must be a vet, and another must not have ties to the research facility.

The AWA bows out gracefully once the animals leave their housing or transport vehicle. After that, AWA washes their hands of the experiments.

Other governing bodies regulate different public health services that conduct animal testing. Numerous parameters and the Guide prepared at the National Research Council establish the minimum ethical, practice, and care standards for researchers and their facilities. They must also minimize discomfort, pain, and distress.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports how many animals are used for animal research. But not the lab animals excluded by the AWA Act. Therefore, the number of bred mice, birds, monkeys, etc., is difficult to monitor. (See, monkeys. They didn't have enough for COVID-19 research; therefore, they still use primates.)

Anyone who has worked with numbers knows that figures can be interpreted or spun. The USDA monitors their data in three segments of pain type. Those animals who get drugs and those who don't.

Experimental medicine and animal experimentation to spare a human body at the cost of basic and applied research are at the forefront of animal rights groups.

Public Opinion

There is always a catalyst that sets the ball in motion. The AWA started in 1966 because of a Dalmation named Pepper. The stolen dog ended up in a research lab and received a pacemaker that Pepper didn't ask for or need. Pepper died. The story made headlines.

Only 39% of people believe that animal testing is wrong. In a Gallup poll, 56% of Americans can sleep at night knowing that animal testing occurs. Younger generations feel more outrage than older generations.

However, people want a say in how they test makeup on animals and what types of testing they are subjected to. Cosmetics and personal care products are not acceptable for animal testing. Women also object in greater percentages to animal testing, surgical procedures, and animal experimentation.

Conclusion

There's no doubt humans are innovative and intelligent. We figure stuff out, eventually. A few centuries from now, the history of animal testing will be in our past.

Anthropologists will uncover a minefield of horrific animal abuse through animal experimentation carved on stone walls. They'll wonder what made us do it.

We owe our lives to animals. But wouldn't it have been great if someone could have met 'Bob' on the beach and redirected his mindset? Humanity is striving to correct many wrongs that went down in the past. It wasn't that long ago in America that owning another human was normal.

Animal testing will shadow us and remain a contentious conversation. What do you think?

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History of Animal Testing - An Appalling Affair - WAF

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WorldAnimalFoundation.org is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn More Imagine this event. A man named Bob ambles along the beach. He's celebrating- the year is 500 BC. Jesus hasn't yet come to save us all. Bob notices a monkey swinging on a vine.

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History of animal experimentation and animal rights | BEOnChip – Biomimetic Environment On Chip

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The use of animal models in scientific experimentation has always been around. In fact, the first known use of animals in scientific experimentation date from 500 B. C. in the ancient Greece. During that period, vivisections of animals were a normal practice to acquire knowledge on the mechanisms an…

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What animal was first tested

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The history of animal testing goes back to the writings of the Ancient Greeks in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, with Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Erasistratus (304-258 BCE) one of the first documented to perform experiments on nonhuman animals. Galen, a physician in 2nd-century Rome, dissected pigs and goats, and is known as the "Father of Vivisection." Avenzoar, an Arabic physician in 12th-century Moorish Spain who also practiced dissection, introduced animal testing as an experimental method of testing surgical procedures before applying them to human patients. Although the exact purpose of the procedure was unclear, a Neolithic surgeon performed trepanation on a cow in 3400-3000 BCE. This is the earliest known surgery to have been performed on an animal, and it is possible that the procedure was done on a dead cow in order for the surgeon to practice their skills.

In 1242, Ibn al-Nafis provided accurate descriptions of the circulation of blood in mammals. A complete description of this circulation was later provided in the 17th century by William Harvey.

In his unfinished 1627 utopian novel, New Atlantis, scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon proposed a research center containing "parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds which we use ... for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man."

In the 1660s, the physicist Robert Boyle conducted many experiments with a pump to investigate the effects of rarefied air. He listed two experiments on living nonhuman animals: "Experiment 40", which tested the ability of insects to fly under reduced air pressure, and the dramatic "Experiment 41," which demonstrated the reliance of living creatures on the air for their survival. Boyle conducted numerous trials during which he placed a large variety of different nonhuman animals, including birds, mice, eels, snails and flies, in the vessel of the pump and studied their reactions as the air was removed. Here, he describes an injured lark:

...the Bird for a while appear'd lively enough; but upon a greater Exsuction of the Air, she began manifestly to droop and appear sick, and very soon after was taken with as violent and irregular Convulsions, as are wont to be observ'd in Poultry, when their heads are wrung off: For the Bird threw her self over and over two or three times, and dyed with her Breast upward, her Head downwards, and her Neck awry.

In the 18th century, Antoine Lavoisier decided to use a guinea pig in a calorimeter because he wanted to prove that respiration was a form of combustion. He had an impression that combustion and respiration are chemically identical. Lavoisier demonstrated this with the help of Pierre-Simon Laplace. They both carefully measured the amount of "carbon dioxide and heat given off by a guinea pig as (they) breathed". Then they contrasted this to "the amount of heat produced when they burned carbon to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as had been exhaled by the guinea pig". Their conclusion made Lavoisier confident "that respiration is a form of combustion". Also, the result showed that the heat mammals produce through respiration allowed their bodies to be above room temperature.

Stephen Hales measured blood pressure in the horse. In the 1780s, Luigi Galvani demonstrated that electricity applied to a dead, dissected, frog's leg muscle caused it to twitch, which led to an appreciation for the relationship between electricity and animation. In the 1880s, Louis Pasteur convincingly demonstrated the germ theory of medicine by giving anthrax to sheep. In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov famously used dogs to describe classical conditioning.

In 1921 Otto Loewi provided the first substantial evidence that neuronal communication with target cells occurred via chemical synapses. He extracted two hearts from frogs and left them beating in an ionic bath. He stimulated the attached Vagus nerve of the first heart and observed its beating slowed. When the second heart was placed in the ionic bath of the first, it also slowed.

In the 1920s, Edgar Adrian formulated the theory of neural communication that the frequency of action potentials, and not the size of the action potentials, was the basis for communicating the magnitude of the signal. His work was performed in an isolated frog nerve-muscle preparation. Adrian was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work.

In the 1960s David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel demonstrated the macro columnar organization of visual areas in cats and monkeys, and provided physiological evidence for the critical period for the development of disparity sensitivity in vision (i.e.: the main cue for depth perception), and were awarded a Nobel Prize for their work.

In 1996 Dolly the sheep was born, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. The process by which Dolly the sheep was cloned utilized a process known as nuclear transfer applied by lead scientist Ian Wilmut. Although other scientists were not immediately able to replicate the experiment, Wilmut argued that the experiment was indeed repeatable, given a timeframe of over a year.

In 1997, innovations in frogs, Xenopus laevis, by developmental biologist Jonathan Slack of the University of Bath, created headless tadpoles, which could allow future applications in donor organ transplantation.

There has been growing concern about both the methodology and the care of animals in laboratories who are used in testing. There is increasing emphasis on more humane and compassionate treatment of other animals. Methodological concerns include factors that make animal study results less reproducible than intended. For example, a 2014 study from McGill University in Montreal, Canada suggests that mice handled by men rather than women showed higher stress levels.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Emil von Behring isolated the diphtheria toxin and demonstrated its effects in guinea pigs. He went on to demonstrate immunity against diphtheria in other animals in 1898 by injecting a mix of toxin and antitoxin. This work constituted in part the rationale for awarding von Behring the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Roughly 15 years later, Behring announced such a mix suitable for human immunity which largely banished diphtheria from the scourges of humankind. The antitoxin is famously commemorated each year in the Iditarod race, which is modeled after the Nome in the 1925 serum run to Nome. The success of the animal studies in producing the diphtheria antitoxin are attributed by some as a cause of the decline of the early 20th century antivivisectionist movement in the USA.

In 1921, Frederick Banting tied up the pancreatic ducts of dogs and discovered that the isolates of pancreatic secretion could be used to keep dogs with diabetes alive. He followed up these experiments with the chemical isolation of insulin in 1922 with John Macleod. These experiments used bovine sources instead of dogs to improve the supply. The first person treated was Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old diabetic who only weighed 65 pounds and was about to slip into a coma and die. After the first dose, the formulation had to be re-worked, a process that took 12 days. The second dose was effective. These two won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923 for their discovery of insulin and its treatment of diabetes mellitus. Thompson lived 13 more years taking insulin. Before insulin's clinical use, a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus meant death; Thompson had been diagnosed in 1919.

In 1943, Selman Waksman's laboratory discovered streptomycin using a series of screens to find antibacterial substances from the soil. Waksman coined the term antibiotic with regards to these substances. Waksman would win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 for his discoveries in antibiotics. Corwin Hinshaw and William Feldman took the streptomycin samples and cured tuberculosis in four guinea pigs with it. Hinshaw followed these studies with human trials that provided a dramatic advance in the ability to stop and reverse the progression of tuberculosis. Mortality from tuberculosis in the UK has diminished from the early 20th century due to better hygiene and improved living standards, but from the moment antibiotics were introduced, the fall became steep so that by the 1980s mortality in developed countries was effectively zero.

In the 1940s, Jonas Salk used rhesus monkey cross-contamination studies to isolate the three forms of the polio virus that affected hundreds of thousands yearly. Salk's team created a vaccine against the strains of polio in cell cultures of rhesus monkey kidney cells. The vaccine was made publicly available in 1955 and reduced the incidence of polio 15-fold in the USA over the following five years. Albert Sabin made a superior "live" vaccine by passing the polio virus through animal hosts, including monkeys. The vaccine was produced for mass consumption in 1963 and is still in use today. It had virtually eradicated polio in the US by 1965. It has been estimated that 100,000 rhesus monkeys were killed in the course of developing the polio vaccines, and 65 doses of vaccine were produced from each monkey. Writing in the Winston-Salem Journal in 1992, Sabin said, "Without the use of nonhuman animals and human (animals), it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but (other) animals as well."

Also in the 1940s, John Cade tested lithium salts in guinea pigs in a search for pharmaceuticals with anticonvulsant properties. The nonhuman animals seemed calmer in their mood. He then tested lithium on himself, before using it to treat recurrent mania. The introduction of lithium revolutionized the treatment of manic-depressives by the 1970s. Prior to Cade's animal testing, manic-depressives were treated with a lobotomy or electro-convulsive therapy.

In the 1950s the first safer, volatile anaesthetic halothane was developed through studies on rodents, rabbits, dogs, cats and monkeys. This paved the way for a whole new generation of modern general anaesthetics - also developed by animal studies - without which modern, complex surgical operations would be virtually impossible.

In 1960, Albert Starr pioneered heart valve replacement surgery in humans after a series of surgical advances in dogs. He received the Lasker Medical Award in 2007 for his efforts, along with Alain Carpentier. In 1968 Carpentier made heart valve replacements from the heart valves of pigs, which are pre-treated with glutaraldehyd to blunt immune response. Over 300,000 people receive heart valve replacements derived from Starr and Carpentier's designs annually. Carpentier said of Starr's initial advances "Before his prosthetic, patients with valvular disease would die."

In the 1970s, leprosy multi-drug antibiotic treatments were refined using leprosy bacteria grown in armadillos and were then tested in human clinical trials. Today, the nine-banded armadillo is still used to culture the bacteria that causes leprosy, for studies of the proteomics and genomics (the genome was completed in 1998) of the bacteria, for improving therapy and developing vaccines. Leprosy is still prevalent in Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, India, and Nepal, with over 400,000 cases at the beginning of 2004. The bacteria has not yet been cultured in vitro with success necessary to develop drug treatments or vaccines, and mice and armadillos have been the sources of the bacteria for research.

The non-human primate models of AIDS, using HIV-2, SHIV, and SIV in macaques, have been used as a complement to ongoing research efforts against the virus. The drug tenofovir has had its efficacy and toxicology evaluated in macaques and found long-term/high-dose treatments had adverse effects not found using short-term/high-dose treatment followed by long-term/low-dose treatment. This finding in macaques was translated into human dosing regimens. Prophylactic treatment with anti-virals has been evaluated in macaques because an introduction of the virus can only be controlled in an animal model. The finding that prophylaxis can be effective at blocking infection has altered the treatment for occupational exposures, such as needle exposures. Such exposures are now followed rapidly with anti-HIV drugs, and this practice has resulted in measurable transient virus infection similar to the NHP model. Similarly, the mother-to-fetus transmission, and its fetal prophylaxis with antivirals such as tenofovir and AZT, has been evaluated in controlled testing in macaques not possible in humans, and this knowledge has guided antiviral treatment in pregnant mothers with HIV. "The comparison and correlation of results obtained in monkey and human studies are leading to a growing validation and recognition of the relevance of the animal model. Although each animal model has its limitations, carefully designed drug studies in nonhuman primates can continue to advance our scientific knowledge and guide future clinical trials."

Throughout the 20th century, research that used live nonhuman animals has led to many other medical advances and treatments for human diseases, such as: organ transplant techniques and anti-transplant rejection medications, the heart-lung machine, antibiotics like penicillin, and whooping cough vaccine.

Presently, animal experimentation continues to be used in research that aims to solve medical problems including Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis spinal cord injury, and many more conditions in which there is no useful model system available.

Veterinary advances

Animal testing for veterinary studies accounts for around five percent of research using other animals. Treatments to each of the following animal diseases have been derived from animal studies: rabies, anthrax, glanders, Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), tuberculosis, Texas cattle fever, Classical swine fever (hog cholera), Heartworm and other parasitic infections.

Testing other animals for rabies do require the animal to be dead, and it takes two hours to conduct the test.

Basic and applied research in veterinary medicine continues in varied topics, such as searching for improved treatments and vaccines for feline leukemia virus and improving veterinary oncology.

In 1655, physiologist Edmund O'Meara was recorded as saying that "the miserable torture of vivisection places the body in an unnatural state." O'Meara thus expressed one of the chief scientific objections to vivisection: that the pain that the individual endured would interfere with the accuracy of the results.

In 1822, the first animal protection law was enacted in the British parliament, followed by the Cruelty to Animals Act (1876), the first law specifically aimed at regulating animal testing. The legislation was promoted by Charles Darwin, who wrote to Ray Lankester in March 1871:

You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity. It is a subject which makes me sick with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall not sleep to-night."

Opposition to the use of nonhuman animals in medical research arose in the United States during the 1860s, when Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), with America's first specifically anti-vivisection organization being the American AntiVivisection Society (AAVS), founded in 1883.

In the UK, an article in the Medical Times and Gazette on April 28, 1877, indicates that anti-vivisectionist campaigners, mainly clergymen, had prepared a number of posters entitled, "This is vivisection," "This is a living dog," and "This is a living rabbit," depicting nonhuman animals in a poses that they said copied the work of Elias von Cyon in St. Petersburg, though the article says the images differ from the originals. It states that no more than 10 or a dozen men were actively involved in animal testing on living nonhuman animals in the UK at that time.

Antivivisectionists of the era believed the spread of mercy was the great cause of civilization, and vivisection was cruel. However, in the U.S., the antivivisectionists' efforts were defeated in every legislature because of the widespread support of an informed public for the careful and judicious use of other animals. The early antivivisectionist movement in the U.S. dwindled greatly in the 1920s. Overall, this movement had no US legislative success. The passing of the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, in 1999 was more focused on protecting the welfare of other animals who are used in all fields, including research, food production, consumer product development, etc.

On the other side of the debate, those in favor of nonhuman-animal testing held that experiments on other animals were necessary to advance medical and biological knowledge and to ensure the safety of products intended for human and animal use. In 1831, the founders of the Dublin Zoo-the fourth oldest zoo in Europe, after Vienna, Paris, and London-were members of the medical profession, interested in studying the individuals both while they were alive and when they were dead. Claude Bernard, known as the "prince of vivisectors" and the father of physiology-whose wife, Marie Françoise Martin, founded the first anti-vivisection society in France in 1883-famously wrote in 1865 that "the science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen." Arguing that "experiments on (nonhuman) animals...are entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man...the effects of these substances are the same on man as on (other) animals, save for differences in degree," Bernard established animal experimentation as part of the standard scientific method. In 1896, the physiologist and physician Dr. Walter B. Cannon said "The antivivisectionists are the second of the two types Theodore Roosevelt described when he said, 'Common sense without conscience may lead to crime, but conscience without common sense may lead to folly, which is the handmaiden of crime.'" These divisions between pro- and anti- animal testing groups first came to public attention during the brown dog affair in the early 20th century, when hundreds of medical students clashed with anti-vivisectionists and police over a memorial to a vivisected dog.

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The history of animal testing goes back to the writings of the Ancient Greeks in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, with Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Erasistratus (304-258 BCE) one of the first documented to perform experiments on nonhuman animals. Galen, a physician in 2nd-century Rome, dissected pigs and goats, and is known as the "Father of Vivisection."

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Why did humans start anima testing

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Many people have questions about animal testing ethics and the animal testing debate. We take our responsibility for the ethical treatment of animals in medical research very seriously. At Stanford, we emphasize that the humane care of laboratory animals is essential, both ethically and scientifically. Poor animal care is not good science. If animals are not well-treated, the science and knowledge they produce is not trustworthy and cannot be replicated, an important hallmark of the scientific method.

There are several reasons why the use of animals is critical for biomedical research:

** Animals are biologically very similar to humans. In fact, mice share more than 98% DNA with us!

** Animals are susceptible to many of the same health problems as humans - cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

** With a shorter life cycle than humans, animal models can be studied throughout their whole life span and across several generations, a critical element in understanding how a disease processes and how it interacts with a whole, living biological system.

The ethics of animal experimentation

Nothing so far has been discovered that can be a substitute for the complex functions of a living, breathing, whole-organ system with pulmonary and circulatory structures like those in humans. Until such a discovery, animals must continue to play a critical role in helping researchers test potential new drugs and medical treatments for effectiveness and safety, and in identifying any undesired or dangerous side effects, such as infertility, birth defects, liver damage, toxicity, or cancer-causing potential.

U.S. federal laws require that non-human animal research occur to show the safety and efficacy of new treatments before any human research will be allowed to be conducted. Not only do we humans benefit from this research and testing, but hundreds of drugs and treatments developed for human use are now routinely used in veterinary clinics as well, helping animals live longer, healthier lives.

It is important to stress that 95% of all animals necessary for biomedical research in the United States are rodents - rats and mice especially bred for laboratory use - and that animals are only one part of the larger process of biomedical research.

Stanford researchers are obligated to ensure the well-being of animals in their care, in strict adherence to the highest standards, and in accordance with federal and state laws, regulatory guidelines, and humane principles. They are also obligated to continuously update their animal-care practices based on the newest information and findings in the fields of laboratory animal care and husbandry.

Researchers requesting use of animal models at Stanford must have their research proposals reviewed by a federally mandated committee that includes two independent community members. It is only with this committee's approval that research can begin. We at Stanford are dedicated to refining, reducing, and replacing animals in research whenever possible, and to using alternative methods (cell and tissue cultures, computer simulations, etc.) instead of or before animal studies are ever conducted.

Organizations and Resources

There are many outreach and advocacy organizations in the field of biomedical research.

Stanford Discoveries

What are the benefits of using animals in research? Stanford researchers have made many important human and animal life-saving discoveries through their work.

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Many people have questions about animal testing ethics and the animal testing debate. At Stanford, we emphasize that the humane care of laboratory animals is essential, both ethically and scientifically. Poor animal care is not good science.

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Why do they do animal testing

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Many people have questions about animal testing ethics and the animal testing debate. We take our responsibility for the ethical treatment of animals in medical research very seriously. At Stanford, we emphasize that the humane care of laboratory animals is essential, both ethically and scientifically. Poor animal care is not good science. If animals are not well-treated, the science and knowledge they produce is not trustworthy and cannot be replicated, an important hallmark of the scientific method.

There are several reasons why the use of animals is critical for biomedical research:

** Animals are biologically very similar to humans. In fact, mice share more than 98% DNA with us!

** Animals are susceptible to many of the same health problems as humans - cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

** With a shorter life cycle than humans, animal models can be studied throughout their whole life span and across several generations, a critical element in understanding how a disease processes and how it interacts with a whole, living biological system.

The ethics of animal experimentation

Nothing so far has been discovered that can be a substitute for the complex functions of a living, breathing, whole-organ system with pulmonary and circulatory structures like those in humans. Until such a discovery, animals must continue to play a critical role in helping researchers test potential new drugs and medical treatments for effectiveness and safety, and in identifying any undesired or dangerous side effects, such as infertility, birth defects, liver damage, toxicity, or cancer-causing potential.

U.S. federal laws require that non-human animal research occur to show the safety and efficacy of new treatments before any human research will be allowed to be conducted. Not only do we humans benefit from this research and testing, but hundreds of drugs and treatments developed for human use are now routinely used in veterinary clinics as well, helping animals live longer, healthier lives.

It is important to stress that 95% of all animals necessary for biomedical research in the United States are rodents - rats and mice especially bred for laboratory use - and that animals are only one part of the larger process of biomedical research.

Stanford researchers are obligated to ensure the well-being of animals in their care, in strict adherence to the highest standards, and in accordance with federal and state laws, regulatory guidelines, and humane principles. They are also obligated to continuously update their animal-care practices based on the newest information and findings in the fields of laboratory animal care and husbandry.

Researchers requesting use of animal models at Stanford must have their research proposals reviewed by a federally mandated committee that includes two independent community members. It is only with this committee's approval that research can begin. We at Stanford are dedicated to refining, reducing, and replacing animals in research whenever possible, and to using alternative methods (cell and tissue cultures, computer simulations, etc.) instead of or before animal studies are ever conducted.

Organizations and Resources

There are many outreach and advocacy organizations in the field of biomedical research.

Stanford Discoveries

What are the benefits of using animals in research? Stanford researchers have made many important human and animal life-saving discoveries through their work.

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Many people have questions about animal testing ethics and the animal testing debate. At Stanford, we emphasize that the humane care of laboratory animals is essential, both ethically and scientifically. Poor animal care is not good science.

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Arab physician, brought animal testing to Spain ( Zaragoza )

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"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, (384 - 322 BC) and Erasistratus, (304 - 258 BC), performed experiments on living animals. Likewise, Galen (129 - 199 / 217 AD), a Greek physician who practiced in Rome and was a giant in the history of medicine, conducted animal experiments to advance the understanding of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), an Arab physician in twelfth century Moorish Spain, introduced animal testing as an experimental method for testing surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.

In recent years, the practice of using animals for biomedical research has come under severe criticism by animal protection and animal rights groups. Laws have been passed in several countries to make the practice more 'humane'. Debates on the ethics of animal testing have raged since the seventeenth century. Theodore Roosevelt in the nineteenth century stated, "Common sense without conscience may lead to crime, but conscience without common sense may lead to folly, which is the handmaiden of crime."

Those against, contend that the benefit to humans does not justify the harm to animals. Many people also believe that animals are inferior to humans and very different from them, hence results from animals cannot be applied to humans. Those in favor of animal testing argue that experiments on animals are necessary to advance medical and biological knowledge. Claude Bernard, known as the father of physiology, stated that "experiments on animals are entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man. The effects of these substances are the same on man as on animals, save for differences in degree". Bernard established animal experimentation as part of the standard scientific method.

Drug testing using animals became important in the twentieth century. In 1937, a pharmaceutical company in the USA created a preparation of sulfanilamide, using diethylene glycol (DEG) as a solvent, and called the preparation 'Elixir Sulfanilamide'. DEG was poisonous to humans, but the company's chief pharmacist and chemist was not aware of this. He simply added raspberry flavoring to the sulfa drug, which he had dissolved in DEG, and the company marketed the product. The preparation led to mass poisoning causing the deaths of more than a hundred people. No animal testing was done. The public outcry caused by this incident and other similar disasters led to the passing of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requiring safety testing of drugs on animals before they could be marketed.

Another tragic drug fiasco occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s with thalidomide. It was found to act as an effective tranquilizer and painkiller and was proclaimed a 'wonder drug' for insomnia, coughs, colds, and headaches. It was found to have an inhibitory effect on morning sickness, and hence, thousands of pregnant women took the drug to relieve their symptoms. Consequently, more than 10,000 children in 46 countries were born with malformations or missing limbs (phocomelia, from the Greek meaning 'limb'). The drug was withdrawn in 1961 and 1968 after a long campaign.

The above-mentioned incidents and others illustrate the harm to humans from the use of substances that have not been first tested on animals and underline the importance of animal experimentation to avert or prevent human tragedy. The practice of using animals in biomedical research has led to significant advances in the treatment of various diseases.

Issues such as 'cruelty' to animals and the humane treatment of animals are valid concerns, and hence, the use of animals in experimentation is greatly regulated. This has led to the 3Rs campaign, which advocates the search (1) for the replacement of animals with non-living models; (2) reduction in the use of animals; and (3) refinement of animal use practices. However, total elimination of animal testing will significantly set back the development of essential medical devices, medicines, and treatment. By employing the 3Rs when continuing to use animals for scientific research, the scientific community can affirm its moral conscience as well as uphold its obligation to humanity to further the advancement of science for civilization and humanity.

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"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, (384 - 322 BC) and Erasistratus, (304 - 258 BC), performed experiments on living animals.