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Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?

sdvds

For the sake of Science!

Reply 1

Retired_Messiah

Scientific, as long as it's an actually beneficial experiment yeah.

Commercial, I'm not really so sure...

Reply 2

vuvuzela

Yes they should. Animals are not equal

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Reply 3

laylarose

Scientifically, I can understand the benefit. I myself use medication that has most likely been tested on animals. It upsets me to know this though. However, stem cell research means that testing may not necessarily have to be done on animals soon!!! :woo:

As for commercial testing, it's disgusting. Mice do not wear eyeliner. Rabbits do not use bleach. It's painful and completely unnecessary.

Reply 4

SophieSmall

For something actually beneficial and necessary such as medical testing then yeah. For commercial, I don't think so it just seems unnecessary, but then again I don't know the ins and outs of the industry so I won't pretend to know why it may or may not be needed.

Reply 5

Comus

The key question here is: is the human benefit gained from testing likely to outweigh the pain that the animals suffer?

As such, it seems to me that testing on animals for research into things with potential medical applications are far more likely to satisfy this requirement than the testing of non-medical commercial products.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 6

Wade-

Well if it's a choice between an animal or human then animals are the obvious choice but I think testing on animals should only be done if completely necessary

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Reply 7

IWantToBeThere

This is an excerpt from the first chapter of "The Third Chimpanzee" [us, humans] by Jared Diamond:

...Different ethical constraints should apply to research on different species. Perhaps it is just our naked selfishness, re-emerging in a new disguise, that would advocate granting special rights to those animal species genetically closest to us. But an objective case, based on the considerations I have just mentioned (intelligence, social relationships, etc.), can be made that chimps and gorillas qualify for preferred ethical consideration over insects and bacteria.
If there is any animal species currently used in medical research for which a total ban on medical experimentation can be justified, that species is surely the chimpanzee. The ethical dilemma posed by animal experiments is compounded for chimps by the fact that they are endangered as a species. In this case, medical research not only kills individuals but threatens to kill the species itself. The ethical dilemma is further compounded by other considerations: that on the average several wild chimps are killed in the process of capturing one (often a young animal with its mother) and delivering it to a medical research laboratory; and that chimps used for research are often caged under cruel conditions. The first chimp that I saw being used for medical research had been injected with a slow-acting lethal virus and was being kept alone, for the several years until it died, in a small, empty, indoor cage at the US National Institutes of Health....