Animal Testing: Case Study

Gabriela Sokol

What is animal testing

• Animal testing is a process of taking tests of a certain product (cosmetics, medicines, treatments) that may be toxic or harmful, on a live animal to make sure it is safe to be used on humans. Experiments that are carried on animals are likely to cause pain, harm, distress and suffering.

Purpose

• The tests are carried out for different purpose. The main areas that animal testing covers are tests and development of medicines for humans and animals, studies of functions of human and animal bodies and assessing the safety of chemicals and substances used to make many products such as cosmetics and its effect on humans health.

Types of animal testing

• Pure research – it includes basic experiments on how organisms function and behave under the influence of different substances or conditions.

• Xenotransplantation researches – it is based around transplanting tissues and organs from one organism to another to investigate how it behaves and develops for different species and is used as a way to overcome shortage of human organs that are needed for organs transplants.

Types of animal testing

• Toxicology test – it is basically safety testing carried out by pharmaceutical companies to rate the risk and harmfulness of using the product for humans.

• Drug tests – to get a license and be sold legally drugs must be previously tested on animals to check whether they are safe to be used by humans.

Types of animal testing

• Education – animals are often use on universities for dissecting as a form of educating students about body functions.

• Military researches – there has been many examples of horrible experiments done in Soviet Russia in the past such as The two headed dog experiment.

Types of animal testing

• Cosmetics Testing – it includes all the different cosmetics and substances that are used to produce cosmetics being tested on animals (mainly rabbits, mice, rats) to check whether they can be harmful to human body and also to see their effectiveness.

History

• Animals have been used for scientific experiments since 17th Century in the UK.

• The popularity of using animals research started expanding in 19th Century.

• The first legal act aiming at protecting animals and limiting animal experiments has been called Cruelty to Animals Act was passed by parliament in 1876 and 110 years later it got replaced by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986

History

• The growth of medical science in 20th century made the number of animals used for researches increase, the process of this number expanding has been also sped up by the Medicines Act, 1968, which purpose was to provide a clearer guide of how animal testing should be proceeded and to the use of it as a response to the Thalidomide tragedy – in 60’s as a side effect of the drug thalidomide many children were born with phocomelia, resulting in the shortening or absence of limbs.

For Animal Testing• Some tests cannot be carried out in any different way and

using an animal to experiment on it will be beneficial.• Suffering can be minimized in all experiments if the

organization carrying out the experiments is aware of the ethical problems and knows that the experiments should be as humane as possible.

• Some experiments carried out on animals lead to important discoveries in medicine.

• Animals suffer from many similar diseases to humans (such as asthma) what allows researches on medical treatment for them.

Against Tests on Animals• The process of testing on animals can cause the objects of

experiments to suffer and even die.• We don’t have the same DNAs so the research can be pointless and

have no benefits.• The product used on animals could be tested in a different way which

often gives better results.• Animals are expensive to maintain and the alternatives to animals

tests are often cheaper, quicker and more effective.• It is morally wrong to make animals suffer and cause pain to them

when it can be avoided by using an alternative method of testing.• Experiments can cause a permanent damage to an animal and reduce

their quality of life in variety of different ways e.g. making it blind.

Alternatives• There is a variety of different methods other than animal

testing to check the safety of a product.• Cell-based test and tissues models are used to test the safety

of different substances.• Computer modeling is a also a way of predicting the effect of

different substance of human body as it allows to create a model of a human body

• Tests can be carried out on almost every type of human and animal cells grown in laboratories

• Donated human tissue, both healthy and diseased can be used for experiments and provide more relevant results.

Facts

• Every year, in Europe 11.5 million animals are used in experiments even though test on animals have been banned in EU in 2013. There are still many ways to avoid this law. Each year, all around the world hundreds millions animals are being used for experiments. Mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits, dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, birds, reptiles, fish, monkeys suffer, taking a part in harmful, various scientific test.

Animal testing free companies

There is many companies that use cruelty-free politics and do not test their products on animals, what is a proof that good quality cosmetics and other care products can be produced without the use of animals. Some of those companies are: The Body Shop, Lush, NYX, smashbox cosmetics, Urban Decay and Too Faced Cosmetics.

Bibliography

• https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/laboratory • https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/http

://www.peta.org.uk/• https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/• https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tra

gedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-regulation

• http://www.eceae.org/• https://www.thebodyshop.com/en-gb/commitment/ag

ainst-animal-testing• http://www.maccosmetics.co.uk/animaltesting

Bibliography

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml

• https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-animal-testing

• http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/animal-testing

• http://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/what-animal-testing.html

• https://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-experimentation

• http://www.uncaged.co.uk/animaltesting.htm