Animal cruelty is not a joke. It’s a serious topic and it’s widely accepted as a wrong and immoral thing to do. Yet, the world is not black and white. When discussing the topic of animal cruelty, animal testing is the grey area. It is hard to discern whether it is animal cruelty or something that both animals and humans can benefit from. That leads us to an important question. Is animal testing beneficial and needed, or is it harming animals without reason?

The first thing to remember is that animal testing, without a doubt, has helped us advance our medicine. According to speakingofresearch.org and fbresearch.org, animal testing was a strong contributing factor in medicine and medical techniques such as blood transfusions, tuberculosis, penicillin, malaria, smallpox, breast cancer, and many many more.

They even have procedures to make it more ethical. There are also policies put in place to prevent it from being animal cruelty. The Animal Welfare Act is one of the biggest examples of these policies in America. However it is criticized for being weak and according to multiple websites such as Neavs.org, Aldf.org, and Nal.usda.gov, it is protecting under 10% of animals being experimented on.

 At the same time, there is a lot of evidence pointing to experimentation on animals not being as helpful as we would believe. There is proof that animal testing may be misleading. According to peopleforreason.org something called the chloroform controversy is a good example of this. Chloroform was killing humans and everyone believed that it was being caused by respiratory problems due to tests done on animal. This was wrong as it was later observed that the most common cause of death including chloroform was from heart failure. Yet this isn’t the biggest issue people have with experimentation on animals.

The biggest criticism that animal testing receives is the harming of animals that may take place during experimentation. The harming of animals is once again, widely accepted as immoral. Many consider animal abuse, as well as animal testing to be cruel and blasphemous. An example is Grace Levine. When I asked her what she thought about animal testing she said, “They still test those medications without knowing if any could hurt the things being tested showing that they don’t really care.”

      Regardless of people’s opinions, Chris Magee from Understanding Animal Research disagrees and made his point clear by comparing scientists to vets. “It is unfair to cast animal research in that light when you consider what they are trying to do, which is to reduce the human and animal suffering. We would not accuse a vet of ‘cruelty’ if they had to euthanize a sick animal because we understand that their actions are towards the greater good.

Were the developers of the rabies vaccine ‘cruel’? Other students from Unis seem to agree with his view. John Kazy and Asmahan are some of those students. John argued that it “Depends on what is being tested. If it’s for something major in medicine like blood transfusion then it’s fine.” Asmahan explained to me that “If it doesn’t affect the (animal’s) population then they should go ahead and test.”

               Overall I feel that animal testing should be allowed but in certain cases. I disagree with using experimentation for cosmetics or when there is a possible alternative. I also think that it should be an accepted strategy in medicine but only with stricter regulations. America needs to follow Britain’s lead when it comes to the laws. In the UK there is a law called the 3 R’s. (Replacement, reduction, and refinement). America needs a program similar to UK’s and needs to remove the stigma of cold hearted scientists.

I think that if we follow this path, America can have a future with less animal experimentation due to the 3 R’s, and no more fighting on whether animal testing is right or wrong. As Michelle Downes said “It is unlikely that animal testing will be completely eliminated any time soon, however. So we work to reduce the numbers on animals used in testing, and to refine experimentation methods to minimize any pain or suffering for the animals that are tested on.”

By Amira Said