Is testing of drugs on animals inhumane?

Is testing of drugs on animals inhumane?

This is a great dilemma. It is true that experimentation on animals is quite painful and the human side of me would definitely like it to be halted or atleast curtailed. This is because morally we believe that pain is an intrinsic evil and any event that causes pain to other living creature is not morally acceptable. We know that animals can’t reason, they can’t talk to us but they can very well suffer just like us. Pain is an intrinsic evil whether it is experienced by a child, an adult, or an animal.

But it is also true that halting testing of drugs on animals or animal experimentation will put an end to the scientific progress and innovations and inventions in the field of medicine which will eventually have harmful consequences in the society. Hence, logically it would not be correct to halt animal testing all together.

But it is also known that some animal experimentation is performed out of mere curiosity by the scientists and has little or no scientific worth. Animals are starved, shocked, burned, and poisoned to satisfy the greed of the scientists to discover something new from animal suffering which will yield some benefit to the human race.

For example, one of the most controversial animal experimentation was the one in which the legs of baby mice were chopped off so that experimenters could observe whether they would learn to walk with their stumps. Now, acts like these which lack scientific objective should be immediately banned and people found practicing these should be punished. Scientists should not be allowed to carry their experiments on animals merely out of habit or ease.

But it is also true that all scientists are not cruel curiosity seekers. Most of them would be experimenting on animals to genuinely discover something that will cause benefit to the society in the long run. One cannot deny the fact that animal research has been the basis for new vaccines, new cancer therapies, artificial limbs and organs, new surgical techniques, and the development of hundreds of useful products and materials.

Hence, animal testing/research should not be banned completely but it should be allowed only in those cases where there is no other alternative to carry the research than the animal himself and an important discovery is dependent on it.