Animal Testing Controversy essays

Animal Testing Controversy essays To Test or Not To Test, That Is the Question: Is Animal Research Beneficial To Medicine? Animal research has always been a debated topic that we may never resolve. It is easy to show incidences in the past, usually dating back at least 50 years, that animal testing has been beneficial, but it is also easily argued that testing on animal has been outdated by more up to date testing methods. In this essay, I plan on describing and dissecting two articles arguing each side of the argument, then I plan on giving my own opinion that I have come to after reading these articles. The first article is called Animal Research Is Wasteful and Misleading by Neal D. Barnard and Stephen R. Kaufman. Just by the title, the reader knows that this article is arguing against animal testing. The main arguments the authors use are: Animal tests are not applicable to medicine, better methods have been found, and lastly, animal testing is used as a rhetorical device. They first describe to the reader that animal tests are not applicable to medicine by pointing out several cases in which animals were tested for different carcinogens and medicines that would have one outcome for the animal, whether it be favorable or unfavorable, and would have a completely different outcome biologically in the humans it was being tested for. Most of these tests came with very dangerous results, human fatalities or even worse medical conditions for the patients, from these faulty results. The reasons for these wrong results could have come from several different causes. One of the causes pointed out in the article is that some of these medicines were being tested on animals that were perfectly healthy and the researchers would have to induce the medical conditions that were shown by their human counterparts. This would mean that the condition wouldnt have the time to slowly debilitate the body that was being affected by this condition. The second ...