Why Animal Testing is Unethical
The debate over whether or not vivisections are ethical has run amongst communities through the ages. It is one the hardest concepts to grasp. A vivisection is what the animal right community calls an experiment conducted on an animal.
Animal rights activists strongly oppose the use of animals that are not human in medical research. No human has the right to use an animal. The exceptions are few and sparse. Vivisections take place without the consent of the animals involved. If a human cannot be involved in a medical research without their consent, then why can an animal be? That is unjust and cruel. Furthermore, the experiments that use animals are typically of a shockingly injurious and painful nature which more often than not results in the animal’s quick death.
Thousands of animal vivisections go unreported every year in the US. Estimates of annual vivisections range anywhere from 17 to 70 or 100 million. Regardless of whether or not they are put in large cages or given anesthesia before pain tests, animal testing is unethical. Animals possess the right to freedom from killing, imprisonment and experimentation.
Some will say that the end results justify the means used to obtain them. Similar to how unethical experimentation on humans can’t be justified no matter how big the benefit to humanity it brings about, animal experimentation holds true on those grounds. Just like all humans, animals are also sentient creatures with an interest in freedom and living their lives. Treating them in a different way and claiming that it is for the sake of experimentation would be discrimination against animal species.
Men or mice? Where do the moral and ethical obligations lie? This debate over the painful testing on animals forces us to think of the wrongfulness in infliction of pain. It is our duty to respect the life of every creature. At the same time, many question how promotion of human welfare and medical development should be enhanced without the use of animals. Solutions exist for every question if you only look hard enough.