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What are the benefits and disadvantages of animal experimentation?

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What are the benefits and disadvantages of animal experimentation?

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To what extent is animal experimentation beneficial?

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To what extent is animal experimentation beneficial?

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Researchers in support of animal testing argue that it is an important part of medical research and the development of valuable treatments. As a result, human lives greatly benefit and are prolonged by advancements that have been improved through animal experimentation, such as complex surgeries, vaccines, anaesthetics, organ transplants, medication, and more.

Since it is unethical to conduct experiments by intentionally exposing humans to these diseases, researchers argue that it is necessary to rely upon animal testing. It can be used to determine if a vaccine or treatment that is being developed will be effective or cause further damage.

Monkeys share the most similar DNA and anatomy to humans, so researchers tend to gravitate towards using them for these types of experiments.

For example, with covid vaccines.

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus strain that causes COVID-19. Monkeys were used during testing for coronavirus vaccines and to gain a better understanding of the long-term health effects of the disease. Due to this, some people may argue that animal testing can be used to benefit public health and humans’ wellbeing (especially since it was a global wide pandemic and it is seen as unethical to use human experimentation for cases like these).

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How well are animal welfare guidelines regulated/animal rights protected?

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How well are animal welfare guidelines regulated/animal rights protected?

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Since animal experimentation and research are utilized worldwide, regulations must be set in place to protect the rights and well-being of animals. However, oftentimes regulations are not always clear, which means that researchers are able to avoid enforcing them as rigorously as they are intended to be.

Some issues with well-known organizations and testing standards include:

The Animal Welfare Act is designed to set standards for humane treatment and living conditions of animals involved in testing. However, it doesn’t apply to rats and most other rodents, which is counterproductive.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund monkey experimentation, causing some species of macaques (rhesus and long tailed macaques) to become endangered. Monkeys are also being illegally poached and imported to be used by some research institutions. This creates more incentive/motivation for people to poach or illegally obtain animals, further endangering the species.

The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) aims to determine whether animal testing performed in labs is necessary and if so, requires researchers to submit reports in order to evaluate how ethical their treatment is. However, since researchers are involved within the organization, it is biased and tends to let violations slide.

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What is considered as animal testing? What is it used for?

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What is considered as animal testing? What is it used for?

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Animal testing can be broken down into two main catgories: biomedical research and toxicology.

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About the USPHS Syphilis Study
Where the Study Took Place
The study took place in Macon County, Alabama, the county seat of Tuskegee referred to as the "Black Belt" because of its rich soil and vast number of black sharecroppers who were the economic backbone of the region. The research itself took place on the campus of Tuskegee Institute.
What it Was Designed to Find Out
The intent of the study was to record the natural history of syphilis in Black people. The study was called the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male." When the study was initiated there were no proven treatments for the disease. Researchers told the men participating in the study that they were to be treated for "bad blood." This term was used locally by people to describe a host of diagnosable ailments including but not limited to anemia, fatigue, and syphilis.
Who Were the Participants
A total of 600 men were enrolled in the study. Of this group 399, who had syphilis were a part of the experimental group and 201 were control subjects. Most of the men were poor and illiterate sharecroppers from the county.
What the Men Received in Exchange for Participation
The men were offered what most Negroes could only dream of in terms of medical care and survivors insurance. They were enticed and enrolled in the study with incentives including: medical exams, rides to and from the clinics, meals on examination days, free treatment for minor ailments and guarantees that provisions would be made after their deaths in terms of burial stipends paid to their survivors.
Treatment Withheld
There were no proven treatments for syphilis when the study began. When penicillin became the standard treatment for the disease in 1947 the medicine was withheld as a part of the treatment for both the experimental group and control group.
How/Why the Study Ended
On July 25, 1972 Jean Heller of the Associated Press broke the story that appeared simultaneously both in New York and Washington, that there had been a 40-year nontherapeutic experiment called "a study" on the effects of untreated syphilis on Black men in the rural south.

Between the start of the study in 1932 and 1947, the date when penicillin was determined as a cure for the disease, dozens of men had died and their wives, children and untold number of others had been infected. This set into motion international public outcry and a series of actions initiated by U.S. federal agencies. The Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs appointed an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel, comprised of nine members from the fields of health administration, medicine, law, religion, education, etc. to review the study.

While the panel concluded that the men participated in the study freely, agreeing to the examinations and treatments, there was evidence that scientific research protocol routinely applied to human subjects was either ignored or deeply flawed to ensure the safety and well-being of the men involved. Specifically, the men were never told about or offered the research procedure called informed consent. Researchers had not informed the men of the actual name of the study, i.e. "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," its purpose, and potential consequences of the treatment or non-treatment that they would receive during the study. The men never knew of the debilitating and life threatening consequences of the treatments they were to receive, the impact on their wives, girlfriends, and children they may have conceived once involved in the research. The panel also concluded that there were no choices given to the participants to quit the study when penicillin became available as a treatment and cure for syphilis.

Reviewing the results of the research the panel concluded that the study was "ethically unjustified." The panel articulated all of the above findings in October of 1972 and then one month later the Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs officially declared the end of the Tuskegee Study.
Class-Action Suit
In the summer of 1973, Attorney Fred Gray filed a class-action suit on behalf of the men in the study, their wives, children and families. It ended a settlement giving more than $9 million to the study participants.
The Role of the US Public Health Service
In the beginning of the 20th Century, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) was entrusted with the responsibility to monitor, identify trends in the heath of the citizenry, and develop interventions to treat disease, ailments and negative trends adversely impacting the health and wellness of Americans. It was organized into sections and divisions including one devoted to venereal diseases. All sections of the PHS conducted scientific research involving human beings. The research standards were for their times adequate, by comparison to today's standards dramatically different and influenced by the professional and personal biases of the people leading the PHS. Scientists believed that few people outside of the scientific community could comprehend the complexities of research from the nature of the scientific experiments to the consent involved in becoming a research subject. These sentiments were particularly true about the poor and uneducated Black community.

The PHS began working with Tuskegee Institute in 1932 to study hundreds of black men with syphilis from Macon County, Alabama.
Compensation for Participants
As part of the class-action suit settlement, the U.S. government promised to provide a range of free services to the survivors of the study, their wives, widows, and children. All living participants became immediately entitled to free medical and burial services. These services were provided by the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program, which was and continues to be administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention.
1996 Tuskegee Legacy Committee
In February of 1994 at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library in Charlottesville, VA, a symposium was held entitled "Doing Bad in the Name of Good?: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Its Legacy." Resulting from this gathering was the creation of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee which met for the first time in January 18th & 19th of 1996. The committee had two goals; (1) to persuade President Clinton to apologize on behalf of the government for the atrocities of the study and (2) to develop a strategy to address the damages of the study to the psyche of African-Americans and others about the ethical behavior of government-led research; rebuilding the reputation of Tuskegee through public education about the study, developing a clearinghouse on the ethics of scientific research and scholarship and assembling training programs for health care providers. After intensive discussions, the Committee's final report in May of 1996 urged President Clinton to apologize for the emotional, medical, research and psychological damage of the study. On May 16th at a White House ceremony attended by the men, members of the Legacy Committee and others representing the medical and research communities, the apology was delivered to the surviving participants of the study and families of the deceased.

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Where the Study Took Place The study took place in Macon County, Alabama, the county seat of Tuskegee referred to as the "Black Belt" because of its rich soil and vast number of black sharecroppers who were the economic backbone of the region. The research itself took place on the campus of Tuskegee Institute.

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It's nearly impossible to go a day without benefitting from the suffering of animals. The ingredients in your toiletries and makeup; your medicine, vaccines, and implants; your cleaning supplies; the chemicals that helped grow your food - most of it was, at some point, tested on animals.

For centuries, the biological sciences have relied on animal testing. To figure out how a machine works, you need to disassemble it and check out its component parts. Understanding the living body, one of nature's most complex and beautiful machines, is no different. Taking apart and fiddling with a toaster doesn't hurt anyone, but dismantling a biological system certainly does.

Many scientists believe that experimenting on living animals is a necessary means of solving problems that affect both humans and animals. But these experiments often involve animals experiencing distress, whether from the side effects of an experimental drug, an intentionally inflicted illness, or simply their confined living situation. Some lucky lab animals get to spend their retirement in sanctuaries once they're no longer needed. Most of the time, the animal dies, either as a direct consequence of the experiment or from euthanasia.

Experimenting on animals places two seemingly good things - medical innovation and animal welfare - at odds. Even those who support animal research generally hold nuanced, conflicted beliefs about it, and questions about the nature and extent of animal testing are still hotly debated.

After spending six years as a neuroscience PhD student working in a lab with monkeys, I left academia with the impression that animal testing is neither as well-managed or justified as regulators claim, nor as malicious as others fear. Government agencies are starting to direct funding toward finding alternatives to animal testing, but the use of animals is deeply embedded in biological sciences.

A world without lab animals may be possible, but we don't live in it yet. Here's what's actually going on.

What is animal testing?

Before humans invented microscopes, universities, or even paper, we were using animals for medical research. Over two millennia ago, ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle dissected dozens of animal species to better understand their anatomy and argued that studying their bodies could teach us a lot about our own biology. Over four centuries later, Galen of Pergamon, one of the most pivotal characters in Western medical history, performed public surgeries on animals ( especially monkeys) for science, providing a spectacle that attracted curious audiences.

Today, animal experimentation is widespread and conducted far from the public eye. It falls under two broad, semi-overlapping umbrellas: biomedical research (which aims to understand, prevent, and treat diseases, as well as uncover fundamental information about how bodies work) and toxicology, or testing the effects of chemicals (including everything from toothpaste and makeup to pesticides) on living things.

Humans generally don't want to be proverbial guinea pigs for new medicines or consumer products. We'd rather know that things are safe before we put them anywhere near our bodies. Companies, whether they deal in cosmetics or pharmaceuticals, also don't want to be liable for poisoning their customers.

People can participate in experiments that might harm them, but historically, at best, such projects have been difficult to administer. At worst, they have involved illegal human experimentation that cast a long, dark shadow over the field of medical research.

Today, many questions - like What is the lethal dose of this new drug? and Does this new surgical technique actually work? - can't ethically be asked regarding humans without first being tested on a nonhuman subject.

For a long time, animals were the only alternative to humans available. To figure out the lethal dose of a new drug, scientists can give increasingly large amounts of it to mice and see what it takes to kill them. To test whether a brain implant actually relieves Parkinson's symptoms, scientists do brain surgery on monkeys. Without computational models or cell cultures sophisticated enough to mimic the complicated interactions between organs, the options have historically been to use animals as a proxy or to drop or scale back your planned research.

Notably, the AWA doesn't apply to mice and rats, which several studies estimate account for somewhere between 93 and 99 percent of all lab animals in the US. The AWA also excludes invertebrates like flies, worms, fish, and cephalopods like octopuses, whose intelligence makes them intriguing neuroscience subjects. The EU, which counts all vertebrates used in experiments, tallied about 10.6 million animals used in 2017. It's harder to pin down a number in the US. Depending on who you ask, there might be 10 million rodents subjected to scientific experiments annually, or there might be 111 million. (Either way, it's more than three times the number of rats in New York City.)

In some cases, a research question requires invasively studying a full, living biological system, but the gap between mice and humans is too wide. The USDA reported that 68,257 monkeys were used in 2019 to study subjects like SARS-CoV-2, Parkinson's disease, and HIV, where physiological and cognitive similarity to humans was a priority. Those primates were mostly macaques and marmosets; the use of chimpanzees (our closest ape relative) is now banned in many countries, including the US.

But monkey research may not be viable much longer. While hundreds of monkey experiments are being funded by the NIH, there aren't enough long-tailed macaques to go around. In a desperate attempt to keep up with skyrocketing demand, thousands of wild-caught monkeys are illegally imported to US research institutions from countries like Cambodia. Two years ago, the long-tailed macaque was listed as endangered for the first time. PETA petitioned the US government to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act, which could end their use in research altogether, but the request has yet to be approved.

Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of experimenting on an animal so similar to us, including some of the scientists who do it. However, many scientists and policymakers agree that we still don't have non-animal alternatives that can answer tough research questions involving interactions between organs. Researchers worry that the looming primate shortage in the US - engendered by transportation restrictions and therapeutic testing requirements and exacerbated by pandemic-era demands - will limit our ability to respond to public health emergencies.

You might not agree that this research justifies the nonconsensual use of highly intelligent animals; many don't, for both ethical and scientific reasons. But it's happening, and if you've been vaccinated or take medications, you've likely benefited from it.

Who's looking out for the welfare of lab animals?

The regulatory framework surrounding animal research is a tangled web of acronyms, committees, and working groups. Since the Animal Welfare Act was passed in 1966, the USDA has been in charge of enforcing it through inspections and annual reports.

In theory, researchers have to justify the use of animals in their work. To conduct an animal experiment, scientists in the US go through a review process with their Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), which decides whether animals are "necessary" and whether steps are being taken to minimize their pain.

This can make holding institutions accountable for animal welfare violations challenging. While researchers are required to report information about animals in their facilities, like what medical procedures they've received and when they've been fed, they are told to keep these reports " minimal, but complete." In other words: Avoid including photos, videos, or graphic descriptions that could enrage activists or entice the media.

There also isn't a clear legal definition for "animal cruelty" in research settings beyond violations of the basic standards outlined by the Animal Welfare Act. This leaves some room for interpretation about what is acceptable and what would constitute illegal treatment. The EU's Directive 2010/63/EU, its equivalent of the Animal Welfare Act, emphasizes that animals should only be used if there are no other options and if the potential benefits of the research outweigh the animals' suffering.

To bridge this ethical divide, research universities and private companies in the UK have signed a Concordat on Openness on Animal Research, pledging to proactively and transparently inform the public about their treatment of lab animals. In the decade since its launch, nine other countries have followed suit. It's likely not a coincidence that these countries generally have the tightest restrictions on animal use. However, an independent review found that Concordat signatories in the UK are still struggling to be transparent about their animal research practices in the face of potential disapproval.

On top of the slow pace for necessary regulation, stigma obscures the true nature of what happens in these labs. In the late 2000s, the most extreme opponents of animal testing used violence to try to end the practice, sending poisoned razors and death threats to lab heads and, in at least one case, firebombing a neurobiologist's car. But rather than encourage scientists to reconsider their methods, attacks like these cemented a culture of silence. While physical violence is not representative of activism against animal testing today - which usually centers around investigations, government advocacy, and direct care for animals and has shifted to become more inclusive - the threat of retaliation still haunts animal researchers, some of whom are encouraged by their institutions to hide their connections to animal testing from the public.

Scientists "don't want to feel like they're bad people," said neuroscientist and author Garet Lahvis, who has written about primate research for Vox.

What if I want to avoid animal testing altogether? What does "cruelty-free" mean?

After learning about what lab animals go through, some people will want to find ways to avoid the products of animal testing. This is much easier said than done, however.

Animal testing is pervasive in health care. Many treatments we take for granted today, like anesthesia, flu shots, and allergy medications, went through preclinical trials in animals before reaching us. They are also valuable to your health, so please keep taking your medicine if you need it.

We have more power to avoid animal testing elsewhere. Animal testing requirements are generally looser to nonexistent for cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and other household chemicals, so it's possible to buy "cruelty-free" makeup or laundry detergent.

Cruelty-free claims used on product labels are often misleading, and differences in regulation across countries add to the confusion.

For years, the EU, Canada, Mexico, and 16 other countries (including South Korea, for the skincare girlies) have had legislation in place banning animal testing for cosmetics or their ingredients (although last year, the UK changed their policy to allow testing for makeup ingredients again). But testing on final products or their ingredients has never been banned in the US. Even if a company doesn't test its final product on animals, it may still run animal tests on raw ingredients. And even if those raw ingredients aren't currently being tested on animals, they probably were when they were first introduced.

Despite pressure from advocates and consumers, many US companies don't bother with these pledges on animal testing. As of this year, approximately 310 brands globally still test their beauty and household cleaning products on animals. And some actively say they don't test on animals at all but still sell their products to countries like China, which, until recently, required that all cosmetics (even imported ones) be tested on animals. Most certification programs exclude brands and products sold in China for this very reason.

To make it easier for US companies to sell truly cruelty-free products in China, US regulators and animal welfare advocates have been lobbying their Chinese counterparts for years to change their approach to animal testing for consumer products. Twenty years ago, Thomas Hartung, a toxicologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, spoke with the National Medical Products Administration (China's FDA) about regulating animal testing of chemicals and told me "it was like we were coming from Mars."

In response to yearslong campaigns by organizations like PETA and the Institute for In Vitro Sciences, China recently lifted this requirement. It is now possible to buy Chinese cosmetics that weren't tested on animals - kind of.

As of January 2021, China no longer requires pre-market or post-market animal testing for cosmetics, meaning that companies from the US and elsewhere can sell things like eyeliner or nail polish in China while still maintaining "cruelty-free" status. But certain "special cosmetics," like sunscreen, teeth whiteners, and hair dye, or products made for children, are all still required to undergo animal testing. And if a product uses a raw ingredient that isn't already approved in China, foreign companies have to either reformulate or get that ingredient approved, which requires more animal testing. So, it's possible to sell US-made "cruelty-free" products in China, but it requires sifting through a confusing and ever-evolving swamp of documentation requirements.

We have made imperfect progress toward a world of cruelty-free cosmetics. While the number of animals used for cosmetic testing in the US has dropped by 90 percent since the 1980s, 44 of the largest 50 cosmetic brands in the world still are not cruelty-free. And without a consensus agreement on what "cruelty-free" actually means, consumers are left to guess which bunny labels are genuine and which are false advertising.

Since many brands can just slap on cruelty-free claims while still sending products abroad to animal testing labs, for now, if you want to avoid animal testing, Leaping Bunny and Beauty Without Bunnies are your best bets. These certifications consider post-market animal testing in other countries as part of their standards.

Alternative methods are (slowly) coming

In some places, like the UK, strict restrictions on animal research and a commitment to transparency have considerably improved lab conditions in recent decades. Companies like Neuralink, however, continue to perform high-risk, ethically dubious experiments hidden from the public eye.

While new alternative methods are under development, animal testing remains necessary in at least some circumstances. Tight regulation - and buy-in from scientists - will be key to minimizing harm in the meantime.

Nicole Kleinstreuer, acting director of the NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM), told me that improving the current state of animal testing hinges on researchers gathering "the courage to admit that we can substantially improve upon how we've been doing things historically."

Kleinstreuer said that changing the current state of animal research "really necessitates a sea change, and a dramatic investment on the part of funders, particularly the NIH."

The people in charge of the money have the power to redistribute it and could choose to spend more of it on projects that don't use animals and less on those that do. That's the easy part. "It's kind of the lowest-hanging fruit, and the easiest ask," said Emily Trunnell, director of Science Advancement and Outreach at PETA. "Even people who are in support of animal testing are on board with the funding of different methods as well."

NICEATM, led by Kleinstreuer, is doing the in-the-weeds work of figuring out how we'd know whether a replacement method is good enough to substitute for animal experiments. Earlier this year, the NIH also approved the Complement Animal Research in Experimentation (Complement-ARIE) Program, which will set up technology development centers for researchers to make better human-based models.

In some cases, using animals is simply bad science. There are some questions "that absolutely necessitate a human cell-based approach," Kleinstreuer said. "You can't look at the efficacy of a drug whose target is not expressed in animals by using animal models," she added. Certain cancer drugs target protein receptors that only exist in humans, and gene therapies often aim to rewrite human-specific DNA sequences. One emerging option: take a sample of human cells, reprogram them to behave like whatever cells you want them to be, and test your drug on the resulting tissue sample.

These tools offer exciting opportunities to personalize medicine to individual patients, but it's still tough to extrapolate results from a small mass of lab-grown cells in a tightly controlled environment to a human body and the complex interactions of its organ systems. Cancer and embryonic development are incredibly complex biological processes, involving lots of different interconnected body parts that evolve over time. Without that capability, Kleinstreuer said it's harder to argue that a substance is actually safe and ready to clear for human use.

Change happens one retirement at a time

While we are stuck with animal experiments, we can try to limit them and make them more humane. Lahvis believes that we should have extremely strict criteria for what animal experiments are funded. Strategically allocating grant funding could not only save millions of lives, but also inspire better science.

Convincing animal researchers to replace animals with other methods is still a huge challenge. Hartung joked that in academia, change happens "one retirement at a time." Unfortunately, "it's often been one graveyard at a time," as retired scientists continue to serve as reviewers who help choose what new projects get funded and published.

The further along a scientist is in their career, the more challenging it becomes to pivot. Because scientists are pushed to maintain a constant level of productivity, Trunnell said, someone who builds their whole lab around their current use of animal models has no incentive to change, unless they have a strong desire to do so. Changing tactics could mean putting their job on the line.

"We're highly leveraged by the system to keep doing what we've always done," Lahvis agreed. And, Hartung said, turning against a tried-and-true method would require a scientist invalidating their existing body of work or at least acknowledging that it was either unethical, ineffective, or inefficient. Using past observations to inform future experiments is at the core of the scientific method, but, Hartung said, "We're not trained to be very self-critical."

That said, a growing number of scientists support the development of non-animal methods, even as they continue to work with animals themselves. People want new tools, whether for the sake of animal welfare or simply because it would make for better science. We might just have to wait another generation.

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The pros and cons of animal testing, why it's so complicated to trust a cruelty-free label, and the future of animal-free science.

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Source about China's laws about animal testing

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Source about China's laws about animal testing

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A guide to the new animal testing and cosmetics laws in China - Focus - China Britain Business Council

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Animal testing is no longer required for imported cosmetics in China – but the new laws create additional hurdles for foreign companies

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How is animal testing implemented into biomedical research?

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How is animal testing implemented into biomedical research?

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Animals are studied and dissected for the purpose of advancing medical research. Doing so allows scientists to gain a better understanding of anatomy, genetics, and biological processes.

It can be used to observe the effects of diseases and new treatments that are being developed, such as vaccines and medicine, before providing them for human use.

Animal testing allows biomedical researchers to conduct experiments and carry out investigations that would be too invasive, complicated, or unethical to perform on humans.

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How is animal testing used in toxicology?

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How is animal testing used in toxicology?

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It is used when testing substances like cosmetics, hygiene products, cleaning products, chemicals, etc., in order to determine if they are safe for human use and prevent unwanted side effects or negative reactions.

By understanding how certain chemicals and substances affect a living being's biological processes, researchers can determine safe and harmful exposure levels to them (for humans, animals, and the environment) before they are used by consumers.

This prevents possible negative effects, such as health complications, and reduces the risk of death.

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What concerns does animal testing raise? Why is it controversial?

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What concerns does animal testing raise? Why is it controversial?

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Oftentimes, researchers conduct experimentation in a manner that is unethical. Testing is deemed controversial due to the animals involved having to endure excessive harm, death, or environmental stressors.

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Scientists are criticized by the public for intentionally causing animals to endure unnecessary harm, sometimes without administering proper medical treatment or taking the appropriate preventative measures.

Researchers may inflict serious harm through chemical burns, electric shocks, unethical surgeries, or by infecting subjects with harmful diseases in order to observe the development of the conditions and reactions to treatments/medication.

As a result, it is common for animals involved in research to succumb to their injuries induced by exposure to chemicals or drugs administered by the scientists.

Animals can sustain serious health complications, including conditions such as organ damage, tumors, seizures, infections, poisoning, burns, and more.

Other times, researchers may intentionally kill test subjects during or after procedures, in order to observe further effects of drugs through autopsies, prevent further suffering, or collect tissues or organs for additional experimentation.

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Another controversial aspect of this type of research involves the environment and inhumane living conditions that lab animals inhabit.

Animals are isolated and confined in cages, which may lead to further psychological distress.

In some cases, animals may not receive adequate nourishment, in order to motivate them to engage in experiments (like performing certain tasks in order to receive food as a reward).

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There is significant protest against this form of research, with many activists advocating for scientists to adopt the usage of alternative methods instead, as a solution. There has also been an increased demand for stricter adherence to animal rights laws and standards set in place to protect their safety.

Additionally, animal experimentation has several drawbacks, such as ethical concerns, expenses, the time-consuming nature of tests, and sometimes producing inconclusive results.

Instead, some other methods that can be used include:

1. Human cells (since animals don't have an identical genetic makeup, it is more accurate to perform experiments using samples from people)

2. In vitro experiments (using DNA samples to grow cells and tissues in a lab that can be used for testing)

3. Computer models (using software and AI to create models, detect levels of chemicals, etc.)

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One case where unethical human testing was performed unregulated was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study:

This unethical study was conducted from 1932-1972 by researchers in Alabama, who wanted to examine the effects of the untreated disease on African American men. In order to get participants for the study, researchers approached men who poor and illiterate and promised them with free medical care, transportation to treatment clinics, free meals, etc. Despite penicillin being discovered a cure, these men were not provided with it, but instead were left to suffer from the disease worsening or pass away (many of the men’s family members got infected as a result of the study as well). The study went on for 40 years before medical panels reviewed it and determined it to be inhumane and unethical.

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Outcomes of the Tuskegee syphilis study:

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Outcomes of the Tuskegee syphilis study:

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This study received a tremendous amount of backlash and raised awareness about the issues involved with human experimentation and the need for ethical standards in medical research. As a result, guidelines were put in place to prevent a similar situation from occurring.

In a similar way, animal testing is being conducted in manners that go against guidelines, but many researchers or welfare organizations turn a blind eye to the issue.

However, if more people advocate for a change, animal research standards could be enforced more seriously. This would also create greater demand for the development and usage of alternative testing methods in the future.

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"Cruelty free” products are often marketed in misleading ways. Additionally, regulations differ in other countries, so it can be hard to determine what products have and haven’t been tested on animals.

For example, China used to require that all cosmetic products (domestic or imported) must be tested on animals in order to be sold. However, in January 2021, this law was changed and now “cruelty free” American cosmetics are eligible to be sold in China, but other products (especially those with unknown ingredients still require animal testing in order to verify that they are safe for human use).

Since there isn’t an actual standardized definition of what it means for a product to be “cruelty free,” some companies could be taking advantage of consumers by purposely misleading them with false advertising. Producers are able to take advantage of this and generate more income, while still exploiting animals.

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One way to combat this issue, is for countries to work together in developing a universal standard and definition for "cruelty-free" products, in order to limit the usage of animal testing (possibly in the production of both cosmetics and medicine).

Doing so might make it easier to enforce experimentation standards more strictly and better protect animal rights and welfare.