Is animal testing ethical?

Animal testing is unreliable and unnecessary

Question: Is animal testing ethical?
Position‹3 of 3: Animal testing is unethical
Argument‹2 of 3›: Animal testing is unreliable and unnecessary

The findings of animal experimentation are not reliable and conclusive. Since animal testing does not have substantial benefits to humans, it is morally wrong to inflict harm on animals. Other experimental methods can be used to produce more reliable results without causing harm to any species.

The argument

The findings of animal studies are unreliable. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has concluded that animal experimentation does not contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge in any way. Most experiments on animals are not relevant to human health. Many are undertaken out of curiosity and do not even pretend to hold promise for curing illnesses. The media, experimenters, and lobbying groups exaggerate the potential of animal studies in finding new cures. They mislead people to think that animal studies have a human benefit. Another related argument is that because animal tests are unreliable, they make those human trials all the riskier. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has noted that 95 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials. Similarly, a 2015 study conducted by neurologist Aysha Akhtar demonstrated that animal studies lack reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology. She also found that animal experimentation significantly harms humans through misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and the direction of resources away from more effective testing methods. Overall, the study suggests that the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits. Resources would be better invested in developing human-based testing methods. Because animal experimentation does not have a substantial human benefit and harms humans, it is not ethical to use animals for research purposes.

Premises

[P1]Animal study findings are unreliable, contributing little to scientific knowledge, with 95% of drugs safe in animals failing in human trials. [P2] Most experiments are not even relevant to human health, while media and lobbying exaggerate their benefit. [P3] As Akhtar's 2015 study found, animal testing actively harms humans through misleading safety studies and misdirected resources that outweigh any benefit. [C] Therefore, because animal testing is unreliable and unnecessary, animal testing is unethical.

Counter-arguments

Animal research has been important in the development of many major medical advances. Millions of lives were saved as a result. For example, asthma inhalers were developed after work on guinea pigs and frogs. One in 10 children currently receives asthma treatment. Similarly, heart and kidney transplant techniques, plus vital anti-rejection medication, were developed using animals. In 2009–2010, 3,700 people received major organ transplants. Another example of human benefit from animal research is polio. As a result of the acquisition of information and the development of techniques achieved through the use of animals, poliomyelitis is no longer a major threat to health in the United States. The number of paralytic polio cases in the United States has declined as a result of vaccinations from 58,000 in 1952 to only 4 in 1984. These examples are enough to claim that animal experimentation greatly contributes to the advancement of science and, therefore, benefits humans.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The 95% figure describes attrition in drug development, where candidates clear animal safety and then fail on efficacy in humans — attrition is what a screening stage is for, and it does not show the screen contributed nothing. The claim that animal experimentation has advanced no scientific knowledge at all is far stronger than any single paper could establish. [Rejecting P2] Research without an immediate clinical aim is not thereby irrelevant, since the physiology it maps is what later applications draw on — and that some advocates overstate the benefits says nothing about what the benefits are. [Rejecting P3] The counter names specific advances developed through animal work: inhaled asthma treatment, transplant technique and anti-rejection drugs, poliomyelitis vaccines. A cost-benefit conclusion has to weigh those rather than set them aside — and the ethical question survives the empirical one, since if animal research does work, the case against it must rest on the animals' interests rather than on unreliability.

Proponents cited

John Pippin
“[T]he use of animal labs is unmistakably contrary to the intention to provide an excellent medical education. Modern medical simulators provide a superior way to learn surgical skills that are specific to human anatomy and physiology.To prepare future physicians for the work they will perform throughout their careers, medical training must be human-focused, not animal-focused, because there are many substantial differences across species.”
Andrew Wheeler
“We can protect human health and the environment by using cutting-edge, ethically sound science in our decision-making that efficiently and cost-effectively evaluates potential effects without animal testing.”
Lindsay Marshall
“Animal research certainly fails animals, in terms of the distress and suffering caused, and just as importantly, animal research often fails people, too, in terms of the slow, unproductive route to useful treatments. More than 90 percent of drugs that have passed animal trials for safety and efficacy are not successful in treating the human disease for which they are intended…[S]urely we can all agree that replacement of animals in testing and research is morally, ethically and scientifically the only way forward.”