In honor of World Cruelty to Animals Day on April 24, I offer my personal views on animal testing, addressing the necessity, problems, and alternatives.
Debating the need for animal testing
April 24th was World Cruelty to Animals Day. On this day, many campaigns were organized around the world to criticize the irrationality and inhumanity of animal testing. Seeing this in the news got me thinking about a question I’ve had for a while: is animal testing really a necessary evil, or is it a long-standing and wrongful tradition? In this article, I’ll argue my case for animal testing by explaining what’s wrong with it, why it’s wrong, and what alternatives there are to animal testing.
Generally speaking, if you ask people who are in favor of animal testing why, most of them will say that it’s because they need medical validation so that they can provide safer medicines to people. On the other hand, if you ask people who are against animal testing, they will argue that it is inhumane because of the suffering that animals go through during testing. However, both sides of the debate are ignorant of the fundamental problems with animal testing, and both sides of the debate offer no real solutions for both humans and animals.
The hype of animal-tested medicines
Every year, 2 million animals are used for animal testing in Korea’s university laboratories alone. However, it is questionable whether these lives are really being used for the benefit of human health and life. For example, Michael Benata, a professor of neurology at Emory University, who has spent decades studying people with Lou Gehrig’s disease using countless lab rats but has been frustrated by his inability to find an effective treatment, says he read every mouse research publication on the disease from the beginning. He found that, first, most of the studies were flawed, with too small a sample size or poor experimental design, and second, about a dozen of the treatments for ALS in mice had no effect in humans, and one actually made patients’ symptoms worse. Benata criticized the current state of animal testing by comparing it to looking for a key in the dark, but finding the key in a bright spot under a streetlight because it’s easier to find the key there. In other words, no matter how many times you look in the bright spot, the key is never there in the first place, so it’s a waste of time and effort forever.
There is another famous example that proves that the results of animal testing are not helpful to humans. This is the thalidomide scandal, in which more than 10,000 babies were born with underdeveloped arms and legs. Thalidomide was taken by many mothers as a treatment for morning sickness, but the drug had a devastating side effect of inhibiting fetal limb development. As the frequency of deformities increased, many scientists tried to replicate the side effects of thalidomide in animals, but animal studies failed to show any problems associated with the drug. Eventually, thalidomide was allowed to be used again, and more than 10,000 babies were born with disabilities before it was banned again. In addition, many drugs developed on the basis of animal testing, such as DES, Ticlid, Lexar, Cerebrex, SSRIs, Enbrel, chloramphenicol, and phialuridine, have been found to cause serious side effects in humans. A 1991 report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that 102 of 209 drugs approved for use in animals between 1976 and 1985, or 52 percent, had serious side effects. Animals and humans react differently to drugs, and this difference can have disastrous consequences.
How did animal testing begin?
If animal testing is so inapplicable to humans and has so many side effects as described above, it begs the question of why so many doctors and scientists continue to test on animals. To find the root cause, we have to go back in time. The ancient Roman physician Galenus was an important figure who synthesized the achievements of Greek medicine to create a vast system of medicine and had an enormous impact on the theory and practice of medicine in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but he also left a legacy of misinformation. Because it was forbidden to dissect human bodies in ancient times, Galenos was forced to dissect goats, pigs, and monkeys, which became the father of vivisection, and Galenos made unwarranted connections between the physiological data he observed in animals and humans. This, coupled with the Church’s suppression of human cadaver dissection, forced later doctors to dissect animals rather than humans, stagnating medicine for centuries.
Over time, however, the efforts of many doctors led to the development of medicine and the accumulation of medical knowledge about the human body that we have today. However, in the mid-19th century, a drug called sulfanilamide was developed that killed 107 people from side effects, and animals died from the same condition. This single event led the scientific community to organize animal testing for all future drug tests. In addition, the huge industry that makes huge economic profits from animal testing, and the medical community, which is at each other’s throats, falsely tells the public that animal testing improves human health and longevity. Human health and longevity have been improved by clean water, food, public health, and sound science. The collusion of these giant animal testing sponsors has led to a false perception among the public that animal testing is necessary for the advancement of human medicine. As a result, despite the efforts of conscientious doctors, scientists, and animal protection organizations, animal testing continues today.
What needs to change?
One of the most common justifications for the continuation of animal testing is that without it, medical progress would be slowed down. And at first glance, this seems like a valid argument. However, many alternatives to animal testing are already being developed, such as computer modeling, clinical studies, epidemiology, autopsies, in vitro studies, genetic studies, and post-shipment drug surveillance, and if doctors and scientists use these alternatives more and more in the future, their contributions to medical advancement will be far outweighed by the more ethical, human-applicable, and rational research that animal testing currently provides. In fact, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, nine out of 10 drugs tested in animals failed to prove safe in clinical trials, while Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug developed by Pfizer, was not tested in animals during its early development, but successfully demonstrated its efficacy and safety in clinical trials, benefiting the health of many people. In addition, the Compact initiative at the University of Surrey, which uses mathematical modeling and computer-aided research, has been shown to be more than 82 percent accurate across more than 100 compounds and is emerging as an alternative to animal testing. Add to this the fact that current treatments for leukemia, thyroid disease, and AIDS were largely developed through clinical research, and the foundation for treatments for diseases such as phosphoric acid poisoning, silicosis, and mercury poisoning was laid through epidemiologic studies, and it’s clear that animal testing is a viable alternative.
Of course, it’s not practical to suddenly stop all animal testing and replace it with other methods. However, animal testing that is done simply to satisfy academic curiosity, testing for which alternatives are already widely available and in use, such as animal testing for cosmetics, and testing that continues for customary or economic reasons despite the availability of alternatives, should be stopped, because we don’t have infinite time, money, or scientists, and the money that is misspent on animal testing should be invested in human-based alternatives to focus on genuine research for human health. Governments, companies, and academia should also invest in research and development of alternative materials to reduce and eventually eliminate animal testing. We also need to educate the public about animal testing and correct misconceptions about animal testing. If these efforts are sustained, in the near future, the cost and time wasted on animal testing will be eliminated and medical research will be accelerated for the benefit of future generations.
Through a series of examples and evidence, I’ve explained how animal testing is wrong and why it should be replaced with alternatives, not for the emotional reasons of feeling sorry for animals, but for the rational reasons of advancing medicine scientifically. It won’t be easy to change the deeply ingrained practice of animal testing right away, but it will take work to gradually replace it with more humane and efficient alternatives. For the sake of the animals who suffer, and for the sake of the humans who suffer adverse side effects from misguided experiments, animal testing is a legacy of misguided knowledge that needs to change.
