December 4, 2015

Think about what animal testing

does in reality!
--------------------------------------------------By Paulette Ramirez

What is what you think when you read about this:

In the 1960s pregnant women were recommended
to take a drug called Thalidomide to treat nausea
due to their pregnancy. As it was commonly used as a sedative, to treat
minor diseases, and there was no evidence to be a harmful drug, the
drug market authorized its sale and consumption to pregnant women. As
months passed by, the children that were born from these women were
born with limbs deformities, or better known with phocomelia. Around
10, 000 infants in Europe, Australia, and Japan were born with
phocomelia which led to the banning of this drug in most countries
(Toxicol. Sci.). These expectations were not predicted due to the lack of
deep research with thalidomide on pregnant beings.
Yes! Animal testing is extremely necessary in order for the human
welfare to be safe. In this way, the field of medicine can have medical
advances thus extending the life expectancy of people. Yes, you might
be thinking that a significant number of investigations have failed, but
with perseverance and caution in doing research, scientists have
succeeded in making medical discoveries that have impacted the entire
population.
Such was the case of the Polio disease in the 1940s, where Jonas Salk
experimented with chimpanzees several years in order to understand
the disease that was unknown at the time. After several attempts and
methods used, in the end he discovered the cause of Polio and
developed the vaccine that would fight against this disease (Primate
Research's role in medical history). Now,
according to Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), children must have 4 doses of
the poliovirus vaccine inactivated vaccine (IPV), at
the ages of: 2 months, 4 months, 6-18 months,
and at 4-6 years in order to protect them from the
acquiring the disease (2014, December 17).
There are people who call against the use of
animals in laboratories for medical and scientific

December 4, 2015

research, but in reality the conduction of Animal Testing prevents

tragedies in humanity. These testing with animals are done first because
scientists are concerned about the welfare of human beings. Nobody
wants another mass of people to be born with defects due to negligence
in research or innocent children to be paralyzed
because of an illness, which can have a solution
but is not achieved because the use of animals in
research is not allowed.
The use of animals should be primarily aimed at
developing medical methods that benefit humanity
itself. Nor we need to abuse animals, because they
are doing us a favor which is giving their lives for
us. This is why scientists need to treat them with
more respect and dignity.
The resolution that I have is that there are fields in
medicine, such as pharmacology, that essentially
relies on the use of animals to come up with
solutions or drugs for certain disease. In the other hand there are other
fields that does not necessarily need to conduct the animal testing and
waste an animal's life, and these are the ones that should use other
alternatives, such as in vitro testing or computer programs, in order to
make new discoveries.

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REFERENCES:

(2014, December 17). Retrieved December 4, 2015, from

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/
Primate research's role in medical history. (1995). In Aping Science (Vol. 5, pp. 2122). NewnYork, NY: Medical Research Modernization Committe.

Toxicol. Sci. (2011) 122 (1): 1-6.doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfr088First published

online: April 19, 2011. Retrieved from
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/1/1.full