Animal Testing

Finding the Cure Funny you should mention diabetes. My girlfriend was recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. When she was diagnosed, I did a lot of research to help me understand the condition. According to the American Diabetes Association, 25.8 Million people are diagnosed with Type 1. That is approximately 8.3% of the population in the United States. So about one out of every ten people has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This is a perfect example of where animal testing has been extremely useful. Insulin was not discovered until 1922, people before this diagnosed with diabetes, would almost certainly pass away due to complications with the disease, others would starve to death keeping they sugar levels under control. Insulin, was developed and with the help of animal testing was developed. Through the use of animal testing, insulin was produced and we now have treatment for Type 1 diabetes. Insulin, is not the only medication that owes its production to animal testing. Many diseases today, are treatable and curable thanks to animal testing. You mention that 80 vaccinations for HIV and AIDS have failed human trials after passing animal trials. Like I mentioned in my first post, Animal testing is a part of the process for discovering and creating medicine. It is a crucial part of the process in where they are able to make medications safe for human trials. Technology I don't have anything to rebut in this section because you failed to mention anything that pertains to this debate. Technology is advancing everyday, but computers are limited by their abilities. However this is irrelevant, whatever happens with computers is the future, this does not deal with the concept of animal testing now. For now, this technology does not exist, thus animal testing is crucial. Negative Effects The reason we use animals, is for the safety of humans as we are developing and creating new drugs and medications to cure diseases. If we moved straight to human trials, the kinks and bugs that would gotten rid of during the animal testing process, would be exposed and have a harmful effect on the humans in the trial. It is naive to say that the death rate would be high only because they were sick before experiments and were likely to die anyways. Volunteering You state, "human trails can be a faster way of researching and producing new drugs and the faster new medication gets released on the market the more lives that can be saved at a faster rate." Perhaps this would be true, but the amount of lives lost using the untested drugs on humans would cancel out the speed of how fast the drug is out. And when the drug is released, whether it was tested on humans or animals, that is not going to effect the rate at which it is able to cure people. I think it would very difficult for researchers to find enough people who would volunteer to take a drug that has not been tested. The people who take drugs now a days know that the drugs have been tested on animals and have a greater assurance that the drugs will protect them. I am not saying that no one would volunteer, but they would not be able to produce enough to test and perfect the drug. Developing Testing on human cells is a great new tool that we are able to do to test different treatment options. However, the human body works as one cohesive unit. It does not work as individual cells. The problem with working with human tissues or human cells, is that they lack the cohesiveness that the body represents. I am not discrediting these as methods of research; however, it goes back to my original statement that animal testing is the most effective method. You mention the example of rats with cancer, do you know that many current different treatments of cancer were produced with the assistance of animal testing? Unfair Treatment Animal testing has been a controversial topic for many years. People have many different arguments both for and against it. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or IACUC was created to developed methods for animal testing that keep it as humane as possible. However, whether or not scientist follow these regulations is a completely different debate all together. Under the IACUC scientists are required to administer pain medication if the animal is experiencing pain. You state that you believe that scientist do not use pain medication, this is a debate that needs to be supported by facts, not beliefs. Whether or not scientists follow regulations weighs nothing in this debate.