People with good conscience are often sick at the ideas of abusing domestic animals or hunting wild animals for fun. Some may even go on vegetarian diet. But when it comes to experimenting on animals for medical purposes, they apparently disagree with one another.
Some people hold that experiments on animals for medical research shall be prohibited as they are too barbaric, cruel, and against humanity. It is evident that animals, as human beings, have their own feelings and emotions. This is especially true with many “favored” animals for researches, like dogs and monkeys. Thus medical experiments such as drug tests and live autopsy equals abuse and cruelty, which usually end their lives in extreme sufferings. Besides, leaving these “advanced mammals” die in great pain and indignity constitutes brazen violation of their basic rights.
However, defendants of animal experiments argue that they are not only useful, but also unavoidable in today’s circumstances. For any drugs that are newly invented, there must be a long cycle of formulating and testing, reformulating and retesting to ensure effects and safety. Sometimes this process can take years to complete. Without animal experiments, it would be impossible to know the effects and side-effects of drugs, thus invention of drugs would have to be halted. Moreover, if drugs are applied to humans without testing on animals, the health and life of patients would be placed at great risk.
In my opinion, while it is impossible to totally banish experiments on animals, we should at least control the number of animals used for such purposes, at the same time devise humane methods to minimize suffering of animals. Avoiding abusing and unnecessary killings would be our priority.
