Animal Research

Argument in favor

Animal research is necessary because some information cannot be had any other way. Animal research provides valid and useful information because of the advances in medicine that it has help develop. Animal research is beneficial to the subjects because the care and habitation conditions are held to a higher standard than pet ownership.

Research involving experimenting on animals is necessary if certain information is to be obtained. For example, all information on medicating children is pure guesswork; even proper dosage is only a best guess extrapolation from clinical trial experimental information culled from adults. Those guesses about dosage modification from adults to children must be assisted by the experimentation upon animals; the alternatives are a) to do clinical drug trial experimentation on children or b) to discover toxic effects on development and teratogenic effects of drugs in the same manner as the teratogenic effects of thalidomide were discovered. Irrespective of kids’ plasticity, adaption and adjustment, the minimal suffering of an innumerable number of laboratory animals weighs less than the suffering of one child poisoned by medical guesswork without the knowledge provided by comparative physiology.

Animal research is beneficial because, even though we need not concern ourselves with a psychosomatic ‘placebo’ effect on animals, we still must use placebos, but the necessity is to discover the baseline stress effect of the administration method. That is to say the animal must be forcibly removed from its environment and restrained for the administration of the medication or placebo. While they can be acclimated to be handled by humans, it is not in the nature of rats’ natural experience to be picked up and held down without being the subject of predation. To minimize this as a confounding variable, the successful researcher must learn to handle and test an animal in the most humane and gentle manner possible. The humane treatment of subjects of research whether animal or human is an integral part of the procedure. Inhumane treatment would introduce uncontrolled variables into the procedure that would render all information thereby gleaned useless. The skills and knowledge exists to prevent or reduce suffering that of noscomial infection. The habitation of subject animals is maintained is a salubrial condition (Carlson, 2005).

Animal research is beneficial because research is not the only purpose for which humans use animals. They provide us with nutrition, clothing, entertainment, and even medicine and companionship without consultation of their will in the matter. Laboratory research is held to a higher standard than pet ownership. And that is as is it should be if for no other reason than controlling confounding variables.

References

Carlson, Neil, R. 2005 Foundations of Physiological Psychology 6th Ed. Pearson Ally and Bacon Boston Ma.

Fischer, Alan E. June 1964 Chemical Stimulation of The Brain page 295-6 in Readings from Scientific American Physiological Psychology W. Ho Freeman and company San Francisco

Jouvet, Michel The States of Sleep Feb. 1967 (pp. 329-336) In Readings from Scientific American: Physiological Psychology W. Ho Freeman and company San Francisco Ca.

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