Animal Experimentation

Animal experimentation in the United States is very common. Animal research has been the source for new vaccines, new cancer therapies, artificial limbs and organs, new surgical techniques, and the development of hundreds of useful products and materials. Unfortunally because of the affects that these experiments have on the animals most of then die. Animals like human are subject of a life, they do suffer and they do in fact feel pain. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane, and the animals deserve stronger rules, laws, and regulation which protect them.

Animal welfare has long been an issue in the United States. As early as the mid-1600s, the Puritans prohibited cruelty toward animals, and by the nineteenth century, groups such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the American Anti-Vivisection Society had been organized. Animal experimentation has been controversial not only between the animal rights movement and the scientific and medical research communities but also between the activist groups themselves. (Sherry)

Causing pain to another living creature is morally wrong. The researcher who forces rats to choose between electric shocks and starvation to see if they develop ulcers does so because he or she knows that rats have nervous systems mush like humans and feel the pain of shock in similar ways. Animals are starved, shocked, burned, and poisoned as scientists look for something that just might yield some human benefit. In one case, baby mice had their legs chopped off so that experimenters could observe whether they'd learn to groom themselves with their stumps In another, polar bears were submerged in a tank of crude oil and salt water to see if they'd live (Claire & Manuel). Animal rights advocates contend that animals have the right not to be experimented on or used by humans for their own purposes (Nancy).

Many argue, while the lives of animals may be deserving of some respect, the value we place on their lives does not count as much as the value we place on human lives. Human beings are creatures that have capacities and sensibilities that are much more highly developed than that of animals. Because humans are more highly developed, their welfare always counts for more than that of animals. If we had to choose between saving a drowning baby and saving a drowning rat, we would surely save the baby. Moreover, if we move to consider animals as our moral equals, where do we draw the line? Technically, any living thing that is not a plant is an animal. Are oysters, viruses, and bacteria also to be the objects of our moral concern? While we may have a duty to not cause animals needless suffering, when we are faced with a choice between the welfare of humans and the welfare of animals, it is with humans that our moral obligation lies. (Claire & Manuel)

For those experiments which do have merit, there exist many non-animal alternatives. It is only out of sheer habit or ease that scientists continue to inflict pain on animals when, in fact, alternatives exist. And, where alternatives don't exist, the moral task of science is to discover them. Halting or curtailing painful experimentation on animals would have harmful consequences to society (Claire & Manuel). If it is wrong to cause pain on a human being, it is just as wrong to cause pain on an animal.

Animal testing is not really affective because most animals react differently to certain chemicals then humans do. Animal not only react differently then humans to drugs, vaccines, and experiments, they also