Are animal test really necessary?

[teotenakeltje]

I was wondering how you nexus members think about animal tests.

For a long time I thought that there was no way around tests on animals in order to test different medication.

Now this has changed because:

- I read some interesting stuff about it
- I think the pharmaceutic industry is constantly producing unnecessary product, just so we can consume them as other products.
So testing those new products in development on animals is just unnecessary
- IMO humans are not more worth than animals, and we have no right to enslave animals to eventually kill them

Apparently there are alternative way to perform tests, on organic tissue of humans, and by using complex computer systems. I do not understand why medication for humans is tested on animals with completely different organisms, and life styles.

I would like to hear what you all think of animal tests...pro? contra? And since there are lots of smart scientific people here on the nexus they could maybe explain why animal test are necessary, or why they are completely unnecessary and responsible for the killing of millions of innocent animals.

(BTW the article that got me thinking is here: Datenbank Tierversuche (no worries German is easy )

 

[endlessness]

There is no doubt in my mind that there are MANY animal tests that are completely unnecessary/absurd, such as for cosmetics and so on, or even some scientific ones, when there are viable alternatives. This isnt always the case though, and specially historically, animal testing has helped pushed medical knowledge incredibly, a lot of what we know for example about drug safety is thanks to animal studies

Im a vegetarian, so its obvious that I wouldnt want to kill any animal unnecessarily, but I also think we all reap benefits of what these tests brought and that not all tests are the same.

So I think we should eliminate all tests that are for vain purposes, eliminate all the unnecessary suffering. Then, guarantee as good conditions to animals as possible before, during and after they are tested (how about animals that are tested with something temporarily and arent killed, are guaranteed an amazingly good environment to live in when they "retire"? ). If animals are killed, that they are done so with the least suffering as possible. So establishing an international legislation regarding that. And that a lot more money is invested in searching for alternative methods that dont need animals.

Then at least we diminish a lot the problems, and the animal tests that do remain can be debated but at least a lot of the problems will be gone

 

[teotenakeltje]

This isnt always the case though, and specially historically, animal testing has helped pushed medical knowledge incredibly, a lot of what we know for example about drug safety is thanks to animal studies

Could you explain/give examples of how tests on animals gave us more knowledge about drug safety for humans? At the end all drugs have to be tested on humans right? And I can imagine that lots of drugs on the market are not healthy at all, regardless the tests they did on animals (there are lots of cases where tested drugs caused human fatalities).

I do not really understand the scientific method of converting animal test results, so they become valuable for humans.

 

[Citta]

Short answer; Yes, it is very necessary in medical research (development and testing of medical devices, procedures and drugs - not cosmetics or consumer products).

Longer answer:
Medical research on animals have provided us with many of the most important medical developments in modern medicine. Take penicillin, it was first tested and demonstrated to work on mice. Or the development of heart transplantation, that relied on experimentation with dogs. There simply is, as of yet, no good alternative to animal testing when developing complex procedures, devices or drug molecules. An example is HIV treatments, which requires an animal model. Why? Because scientists can't grow immune systems in a petri dish, so the only realistic option for testing is in an animal model. It is unfortunate, but necessary. Very simple things can and also should be tested by alternative means however, such as computer simulation, tissue cultures and so on. But, as already demonstrated, a large portion of experimental therapies cannot rely on these simple techniques, which leaves us with three alternatives; continue animal testing under strict regulations, experiment directly on humans (would that be any better?) or completely shut down vast swaths of important medical research.

Medical advances just don't materialize out of nothing, direct human experimentation is even more ethically serious and it is very unrealistic to just shut down a lot of research. So until we can figure out reliable and better means to test complex things, we must unfortunately rely ourselves on animal testing.

It is also worth mentioning a case where animal testing was not performed prior to marketing. One famous case is the firm Vitek, that saw and exploited a loophole in FDA regulations to bring a synthetic jaw implant on the market without adequate testing. When it had been introduced it didn't take long before the FDA received reports that Vitek's implant was fragmenting in patients' jaws, triggering a chemical reaction that literally eroded away their jawbones. It was demonstrated later that the same eroding of the jaw was seen in animal testing subjects. Had this been done before it was released on the market it would never have reached patients.

 

[bindu]

Well, your dmt was tested on animals.

Of course its really sad that even some shitty cosmetic products get tested.

On the other hand there are some cosmetic prducts that pride themselves that their not been tested on animals, "Natural" cosmetic products which actually contain quite toxic stuff.

May there be mercy on men for their sins...

 

[teotenakeltje]

Well My guess (it's just a guess off course) is that all animal test could be replaced by alternatives (human cells, computersimulations, microchips,..). It is probably just the current politic that prevents that more research is done on this level. So yes..for now we have to rely on animal tests, but maybe we should invest more in alternatives. And off course more regulation of the pharma industry...

 

[bindu]

in medicine, cell culture tests are done first, animals, then humans

computer simulations can only be used when all the factors are known, which is not the case with "bodymachines"

the nazis came up with methods to replace animal testing, although that was not so nice either because they used people for their experiments