I think that all animal testing should be outlawed.
I can agree with you about testing on cosmetics and the like.
But when it comes to drugs for illness and disease, no matter how much theoretical work is done on a new drug, in most cases there is no way to know whether it will actually work on the targeted disease, and what unexpected side effects it might have, without testing it in some living being, whether human (we all are, of course, animals) or non-human.
If we stop all non-human animal testing, one of three things will necessarily result.
1. There will be no new drugs introduced, and diseases like the bird flu, resistant TB, bubonic plague, polio, and the like will increase and in some cases become epidemic, and research on further cures for heart disease, HIV and AIDS, cancers, and other diseases will end.
2. Drug companies must put on the market drugs that have not been tested in living beings, with the result that we are almost certain to have more drugs like Thalidomide which cause enormous human tragedies.
3. Drugs must be tested in humans. And what humans would be willing to volunteer to be test subjects for drugs that might kill them or lead to blindness, liver damage, or other serious disabilities? The very poorest for whom the choice of a few hundred dollars as payment for being a test human would be worth the risk of death, prisoners serving long sentences who might have their sentences commuted if they survived the tests, or other vulnerable persons.
Which of these alternatives do you think is preferable to continuing animal testing? |
