Alexander 1

Morgan Alexander
Ms. Coco
English 1001
30 November 2016
Audience: People that dont know much about it, but want to learn about animal testing.
Preface: Before writing this draft I was originally going to just focus on why we use animals for
testing. After doing research and putting them together, I realized I could put the articles into
two categories of challenges and benefits. I feel like focusing on that part is working well with
the flow of my paper. The thing that needs work is the organization, which is really what I plan
to focus more on of after I finish writing the entire paper. the reason I say the organization is
because I havent decided if I should go straight into the benefits since there arent a lot that I
found or if I should wait until after I talk about the challenges. The roadblocks that I faced is that
I might need to find at least one more article on the benefits because right now most of what I
have been finding is challenges. In the conference I want to focus on is how much I should focus
on the benefits since in my research I have found a lot more challenges than benefits.
Animal Testing: Too Challenging?
Many people forget animal testing is happening since its not glorified in the media
because its not a new topic. However, to animal rights activist it is a very big topic to which
they spend most of their time defending. Each side of animal testing has their own opinions on
the matter, but who is really right? While animal rights activist will say there are no benefits
and only challenges. The scientists doing the research will defend the tests saying there are
plenty of benefits. This has brought me to the question: Why are there more challenges than
benefits of disease testing on animals?
Looking at the scientists view points one can see that animal testing has helped find
cures for not only humans, but also the animals being tested. Certain animals, but not all have
some of the same organs as humans do and react the same that humans would react. For
instance, Sebastian McBride and his colleagues started off using rodents as test subjects to test

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for Huntington disease. However, since rodents do not have a long lifespan like humans do,
scientists were forced to switch to pigs and sheep because they have a lot longer lifespan (26).
The scientists did end up getting to observe the disease because it had time to develop like it does
in humans. They even discovered what else they needed to look for that causes the disease. Of
course the scientists thought that would be enough evidence to prove they needed to use animals
for the testing. Although this is a benefit of animal testing, some will argue that it is also a
challenge. The fact that they actually had to change the animals they were testing made it a
pretty big challenge because they had to start all the trials over again from scratch.
Animal testing is not just in the United States, there are many others that also use
animals like the United Kingdom. Pandora Pound and other professors from different
universities in the UK explain that there is not a lot of evidence that animal research actually
helps humans. The professors observed that most people are okay letting scientist test on
animals because they are on the assumption that it benefits humans. Since they couldnt find
much evidence on the research benefitting humans, the professors decided to do some research
for themselves. They ended up only finding 277 papers that could show some light on evidence,
but instead were only able to use 6 papers. What they found in doing this research was that the
scientists only really published the ones that helped humans and not the ones that didnt do
anything to help (4). The challenge in all of this is that it is difficult to carry this information to
humans because there could be other experiments that didnt work. People were then starting to
become hesitant in using animal for research all together.
According to Aysha Akhtar, More than 115 million animals are used worldwide in
experimentation or to supply the biomedical industry. From known knowledge, we dont get
that many cures for vaccines every year. I couldnt even tell you the last time scientists found a

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cure for a disease. Just looking at this statistic, one should argue if we should still be using
animals for research or at least if we should be using that many animals. Despite what some may
think, animals do have emotions and just like humans, they can feel pain that is being inflicted
on them from diseases. Those millions of animals that were used and most likely died from the
tests could feel the pain the diseases caused them the entire time they were being tested. The
biggest obstacle in all of this is the fact that we could be morally wrong for putting animals
through pain when they can feel what we feel.
On the other hand, some scientists along with professors believe that it would be easier to
do the test on alternative methods. They think it would give better and faster results to finding a
cure or to see how it spreads. Valentina Busin and her colleagues introduced the point of care
technique which not only cost less than using the animals for the test, but they can use more
money on testing many different diseases instead of just a few. Not to mention this kind of
technique can be used for many different tests and not just disease testing. Valentina also admits
that there are challenges to this testing (##). Every sort of technology has its limitations, but new
technology is always being invented to take the place of the old.
Humans are very different than any other species on earth and should be treated that way
in the field of science. Most people believe that monkeys or apes are the equivalent to humans in
the animal world. However, some diseases are only found in humans and never in other species.
If the disease is only found in humans how are scientists suppose to get an accurate result from
testing them in animals? It would be one thing if animals could already get the disease, but they
cant because they arent human. For example, keloid disease has only ever been found in
humans, not even human primates naturally develop scar tissue, (##). Of course, no scientist
will test on humans because they have laws against that and is illegal. They have to settle for

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animals even though it doesnt really make sense. Jaana Marttla and others describes how in
order to use animals for the testing, scientist have to take normal animals and turn their tissue
and organs into something that can form the disease (3). All of this is quite a big challenge to
overcome because they are not just putting the disease into the animals this time. The scientists
have to take time out of the study first to plant or rearrange tissue inside the animals. There has
to be a better way right?
Kind of like I said before, not all animals are could test subjects. Each disease has its
own organ or tissue that needs to be a host. Also like the sheep and pigs, some diseases need
animals that are going to last longer than others. SJ Morgan and colleagues describe the
challenges of using animals for drug safety. Drugs and drug safety correspond with disease
testing because it is whats used to cure these diseases. They state that there were so many
challenges to the testing of drugs for the diseases that they arent even allowed to use them
without a human trial (##). If we cant even use the drugs tested specifically for a certain disease
without having humans test them first, how are we suppose to rely on the tests at all? Before
they passed a law saying that humans had to do a trial with the drug first, we blindly use them
assuming they would help cure a common cold or an infectious disease. Finding the drugs or
vaccines for these diseases is easier to do than studying the animals inflicted. If we cant even
trust the drug without using humans as well, we shouldnt be trusting the disease testing without
humans.
Humans and animals are too diverse of species to be able to test on the other and assume
it would be the same outcome. Clearly there are many challenges compared to benefits of using
animals in disease testing. If there wouldnt be so many challenges and humans benefited more
from the testing, then there probably wouldnt be any sort of argument for the case of the

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animals. Its like a human relationship, you cant force something that isnt there or working. So
why do we continue to use animals for disease testing when it causes so many problems rather
than solutions? Why do we find it immoral to test on humans that already have the disease
inside of them but not animals that we are placing the disease into? Really we should all ask
ourselves one simple question: Do we really want to keep using animals knowing that millions
are being sacrificed each year to not even get a good outcome?

**Peer Review
1. I feel the main point of this paper is showing the wrong doing side of animal testing, and
you are correct. The scientists seem they cannot provide enough factual or statistical
information as to why there are more benefits than challenges when animal testing.
2. What I learned after reading the paper that I didnt fully appreciate before is, the amount
of papers that were found and not used to show the challenges of animal testing. Having
200 plus papers and only showing the 6 that provides benefits seems like they are trying
to hide something or even they dont even want to believe it. I find this very interesting
and would care to learn more about it.

Works Cited
Akhtar, A. "The Flaws And Human Harms Of Animal Experimentation." Cambridge Quarterly
Of Healthcare Ethics 24.4 (n.d.): 407-419. Science Citation Index. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Busin, Valentina, et al. "Review: Opportunities And Challenges For The Application Of
Microfluidic Technologies In Point-Of-Care Veterinary Diagnostics." Molecular And
Cellular Probes 30.(2016): 331-341. ScienceDirect. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Marttala, Jaana, et al. "Mini Reviews: Keloids: Animal Models And Pathologic Equivalents To
Study Tissue Fibrosis." Matrix Biology 51.(2016): 47-54. ScienceDirect. Web. 10 Nov.
2016.
McBride, Sebastian D., Nicholas Perentos, and A. Jennifer Morton. "Basic Neuroscience: A
Mobile, High-Throughput Semi-Automated System For Testing Cognition In Large NonPrimate Animal Models Of Huntington Disease." Journal Of Neuroscience Methods
265.Current Methods in Huntington's Disease Research (2016): 25-33. ScienceDirect.
Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Morgan, SJ, et al. "Use Of Animal Models Of Human Disease For Nonclinical Safety
Assessment Of Novel Pharmaceuticals." Toxicologic Pathology 41.3 (n.d.): 508-518.
Science Citation Index. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Pound, Pandora, et al. "Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?." BMJ:
British Medical Journal 2004: 514. JSTOR Journals. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.