Persuasive speech Topic: Animal Testing Should we ban animal experimentation? There has been a controversy between animal rights supporters and scientists about whether it is right to use animals in experimental research. Also, it is very debatable whether using animals for such research results in finding a cure for diseases. Using animals for medical research is ethical a long as it contributes to scientific development and helps scientists find ways to improve human health.And this practice is only acceptable on the condition that necessary pains are taken and animals are treated humanely. Many people are against animal testing on both moral and scientific ground.
Morally, animal testing is often extremely cruel and completely unnecessary. For example, it was reported from an undercover footage that dogs were being force-fed weedkiller in a laboratory. Allegedly, this was to see how toxic weedkiller was.However, it had already been tested on humans, and the dogs were being given 50 times what had been established as a dangerous dose for humans.
What possible reason could there have been for this? Many people believe that it is nothing but torture and find these sorts of animal cruelty utterly repugnant. Scientifically, testing products meant for humans on animals is unreliable and potentially dangerous. Animals react differently to humans to many substances, rendering many tests pointless.For example, a contraceptive called Tamoxifen was once developed which was tested on rats. It worked as intended, and was given to humans. However, it had the opposite effect on women, actually increasing their fertility.
Others think that it’s archaic as Forward-thinking scientists have developed humane, modern, and effective non-animal research methods, including human-based micro dosing, in vitro technology, human-patient simulators, and sophisticated computer modelling, that are cheaper, faster, and more accurate than animal tests.On the other hand, many people also think that animal experimentation has saved so many lives by playing a massive part in creating cures or vaccines for asthma, diabetes, cancer, TB, malaria and so on. It was estimated that 93% of animals in tests are under the influence of painkillers or anaesthetics which therefore means that animals are not tortured or mistreated during supposedly cruel tests which conclude that the tests are done very humanely.Furthermore, some animals can catch the same diseases and can have similar health effects to humans. For example, rats and mice are used frequently for cancer and heart disease experiments. They can be affected by the same types of cancers as humans and they live short lives, so the diseases show up naturally within one or two years as opposed to thirty or forty in humans.
Also the rats breed quickly so we can monitor the heredity and predispositions of such diseases more effectively.People also believe that more accurate result are obtain when experimenting with animal on a particular disease rather than using computer based testing technologies as physical and mental changes can be precisely observed on the test subject. To sum up, I think that using animals for medical research is ethical and moral as long as it contributes to scientific development and helps scientists find ways to improve human health. And this practice is only acceptable on the condition that necessary measures are taken against animal cruelty in laboratories and that they are also treated humanely.
