Against Animal Testing Essay

Animal testing is a highly prominent topic in today’s society. Animal testing ethicacy has been under debate for many decades and is likely to be at the forefront of ethical concern for many years to come. Many people this day and age are turning to veganism and holding concerns about the mistreatment of animals, so the issue is likely to remain a hot topic for some time. So why exactly should people take any notice and should the debate come to an end for any good reason?

Animal experimentation has been around for many years and many people have become fascinated about animals and the way they work. Ever since aristotle for instance, there have been experiments done on all sorts of creatures. Humans over history have used animals experimentation to provide ways of making sense of the world around them, for instance dissecting a horses eye in order to observe the workings of lenses for developments in optics. Since this time, animal testing has expanded to numerous clinical trials being done on rats and other such creatures, yet can this be justified. There are many things animal testing has been used for:

• Developing cosmetics
• Creating new vaxinations
• Helping with conservation
• Helping develop new medicines

Given that an animal is a sentient being, can we really rationalise that its death is good to us and benefits society? Arguably a creature like a rat is a lower being on the cognitive hierarchy than a human, but people would still argue that that needn’t result in its suffering if we can prevent it. The philosophy of utilitarianism argues that animal testing in this regard is unjustified because just because an animal can’t talk to us, it doesn’t matter that it can’t feel pain and we should have concern for species. Utilitarianism argues that we should do the most good that we can do, or if that something is right, it should benefit the majority. If we discriminate on grounds of species, we are essentially saying that one species is better than another and that it deserves less consideration than another, but can this really be justified? Is a human being more important than an animal just because it is of a different species.

Is it necessary to carry out animal testing to the great degree that our society does in this day and age? You may find it harrowing that an overwhelmingly large proportion of animal testing is actually done by the cosmetic or pharmaceutical industry. Is there any reason that we need to develop a new shade of lipstick if we already have enough shades available? Blatant consumerism is fueling animal testing, but should the market respond? Many people would argue that the amount of animal testing we do is unjustified, because most of it is in fact not for gain to society. Putting lipstick in the eyes of rabbits in a cruel manner just to see if it can be sold in the shops isn’t going to benefit society – do we need another kind? Not only this but there are also cases of the US military using monkeys and teaching them to try and fly planes so that they can then test the effects of different poisonous substances on flight ability. Does this not seem like a futile and pointlessly cruel act? It is still up for opinion because perhaps people value national security more than they value monkey wellbeing, but the amount of cruelty done by animal testing is a matter of fact and certainly isn’t debatable. It doesn’t even take reading a well thought out animal testing essay to guage this fact.

A lot of medical experts would argue that animal testing is justifiable in order to save the lives of many people longer down the line through the development of medicines and lifesaving drugs. Even reputable ethics professors such as Peter Singer have been seen to defend some claims that animal experimentation can in fact make human lives better in an argumentative essay on animal testing. Tipu Aziz, a famous neurosurgeon, explains that over 40,000 people have been made better as a result of a treatment that had been developed as a result of experimentation on monkeys, leading to the lives of over 100 monkeys severely compromised. Is this a justifiable cost?

It is often the case that medical experts state that animals experimented on are treated well and aren’t harmed, but are medical experiments really in an animal’s interest? It is not clear how much medical testing is actually necessarily needed to be done on animals either because of the amount of medicines that aren’t needed. Every year pharmaceutical companies invent hundreds of new drugs and diseases to diagnose people with and then push the drugs onto regular citizens who may not in fact need them after all, so why should they need to test on more and more animals so that they can put out more drugs? Often drugs are tested on animals yet the drugs are to treat “illnesses” like compulsive shopping disorder which are debatable as to whether they’re indeed an illness. It is clear that a person should not cause suffering or harm to any sentient being that is capable of experiencing harm or suffering except themselves with the exception of very good reasons.

It is often the case that animal testing is actually futile and ineffective because animals don’t exhibit most of the diseases that humans tend to have, e.g. cancers, heart disease, schizophrenia or parkinson’s. Experiments therefore can do much to belittle the complex nature of human diseases that are affected widely due to genetic factors, psychological factors, socioeconomic factors and a wide range of other personal experiences. The case of unreliability of experiments could actually make the outcomes of experiments dangerous for human beings if results are over exaggerated and misconstrued. There are even cases of human drug trials that have been given the go ahead due to data from animal testing results leading to numerous deaths. Do all of these things mean that animal testing can reliably continue in this day and age with these things in mind?

Animal testing essay conclusion

The case for and against animal testing is widely debated and so this makes for a great topic choice for a good animal testing argumentative essay, yet not everything people have said can be sincerely credible so it’s best to way up the arguments for and against relating to the best evidence. It’s no fiction however that animals are being mistreated left, right and centre all over the world and this mistreatment of animals through animal testing is likely to continue on for many years to come if something isn’t done about it. This essay argues that overwhelmingly, the cons outweigh the pros in animal testing cases and the philosophy of utilitarianism holds true, meaning that animals interests do matter first and foremost in today’s society. It is up to human society to give it thought but also if benefits are to be raised in the most effective way possible, to rise up as soon as possible and make their voices be heard so that animals stop suffering today.