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An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing. Animals are used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medications, check the safety of products destined for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and health care uses. Research on living animals has been practiced since at least 500 BC.

Proponents of animal testing say that it has enabled the development of many life-saving treatments for both humans and animals, that there is no alternative method for researching a complete living organism, and that strict regulations prevent the mistreatment of animals in laboratories.

Opponents of animal testing say that it is cruel and inhumane to experiment on animals, that alternative methods available to researchers can replace animal testing, and that animals are so different from human beings that research on animals often yields irrelevant results. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments.

The California Biomedical Research Association states that nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using animals. Animal research has contributed to major advances in treating conditions such as breast cancer, brain injury, childhood leukemia, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, and more, and was instrumental in the development of pacemakers, cardiac valve substitutes, and anesthetics.
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Pro 2

Animal testing is crucial to ensure that vaccines are safe.
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Pro 3

There is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system.
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Pro 4

Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human beings in many ways.
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Pro 6

Animals themselves benefit from the results of animal testing.
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Pro 7

Animal research is highly regulated, with laws in place to protect animals from mistreatment.

In addition to local and state laws and guidelines, animal research has been regulated by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) since 1966. As well as stipulating minimum housing standards for research animals (enclosure size, temperature, access to clean food and water, and others), the AWA also requires regular inspections by veterinarians.
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Pro 8

Animals often make better research subjects than human beings because of their shorter life cycles.
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Pro 11

The vast majority of biologists and several of the largest biomedical and health organizations in the United States endorse animal testing.

A poll of 3,748 scientists by the Pew Research Center found that 89% favored the use of animals in scientific research. The American Cancer Society, American Physiological Society, National Association for Biomedical Research, American Heart Association, and the Society of Toxicology all advocate the use of animals in scientific research.
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Pro 12

Some cosmetics and health care products must be tested on animals to ensure their safety.
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Con 2

Scientists are able to test vaccines on humans volunteers.
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Con 3

Alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals.

Other research methods such as in vitro testing (tests done on human cells or tissue in a petri dish) offer opportunities to reduce or replace animal testing. Technological advancements in 3D printing allow the possibility for tissue bioprinting: a French company is working to bioprint a liver that can test the toxicity of a drug. Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, can be made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and may produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin.
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Con 4

Animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects.
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Con 5

Drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe.

The 1950s sleeping pill thalidomide, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities, was tested on animals prior to its commercial release. Later tests on pregnant mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats, and hamsters did not result in birth defects unless the drug was administered at extremely high doses. Animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before being pulled from the market.
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Con 6

Animal tests may mislead researchers into ignoring potential cures and treatments.
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Con 7

Only 5% of animals used in experiments are protected by US law.

The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) does not apply to rats, mice, fish, and birds, which account for 95% of the animals used in research. The types of animals covered by the AWA account for fewer than one million animals used in research facilities each year, which leaves around 25 million other animals without protection from mistreatment. The US Department of Agriculture, which inspects facilities for AWA compliance, compiles annual statistics on animal testing but they only include data on the small percentage of animals subject to the Act.
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Con 8

Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings.

94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials. According to neurologist Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH, over 100 stroke drugs that were effective when tested on animals have failed in humans, and over 85 HIV vaccines failed in humans after working well in non-human primates. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) found that nearly 150 clinical trials (human tests) of treatments to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients have been undertaken, and all of them failed, despite being successful in animal tests.
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Con 9

There is increasing demand for cruelty-free products.

Michael Bachelor, Senior Scientist and Product Manager at biotech company MatTek, stated, "We can now create a model from human skin cells - keratinocytes - and produce normal skin or even a model that mimics a skin disease like psoriasis. Or we can use human pigment-producing cells - melanocytes - to create a pigmented skin model that is similar to human skin from different ethnicities. You can't do that on a mouse or a rabbit."
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Con 11

The Animal Welfare Act has not succeeded in preventing horrific cases of animal abuse in research laboratories.

Violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the federally funded New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana included maltreatment of primates who were suffering such severe psychological stress that they engaged in self-mutilation, infant primates awake and alert during painful experiments, and chimpanzees being intimidated and shot with a dart gun.
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Con 12

Medical breakthroughs involving animal research may still have been made without the use of animals.
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Did You Know?

1. 95% of animals used in experiments are not protected by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, and cold-blooded animals such as reptiles and most fish.

2. 89% of scientists surveyed by the Pew Research Center were in favor of animal testing for scientific research.

3. Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and mice are 98% genetically similar to humans. The US National Institutes of Health announced it would retire its remaining 50 research chimpanzees to the Federal Chimpanzee Sanctuary System in 2015, leaving Gabon as the only country to still experiment on chimps.

4. A Jan. 2020 report from the USDA showed that in one year of research, California used more cats (1,682) for testing than any other state. Ohio used the most guinea pigs (35,206), and Massachusetts used the most dogs (6,771) and primates (11,795).

5. Researchers Joseph and Charles Vacanti grew a human "ear" seeded from implanted cow cartilage cells on the back of a living mouse to explore the possibility of fabricating body parts for plastic and reconstructive surgery.

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Animal Testing | Pros & Cons | ProCon.org

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An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing. Animals are used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medications, check the safety of products destined for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and health care uses.