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The Moral Status of Animals

Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not? Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals. For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations. Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world. Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering and death. This latter group expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals. In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration. What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.

1.1 Speciesism

1.2 human exceptionalism, 1.3.1 rational persons, 1.3.2 legal persons, 1.4 sentience, 2. the moral significance of animals’ moral claims, 3. alternative perspectives on human relations to other animals, references cited, further reading, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the moral considerability of animals.

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged. It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable. However, when we ask why we think humans are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged, we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive.

The view that only humans are morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”. In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism. He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species. Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:

the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)

Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not characteristics that matter when it comes to making moral claims.

Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t. That humans are members of the species Homo sapiens is certainly a distinguishing feature of humans—humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy, but this is unimportant from the moral point of view. Species membership is a morally irrelevant characteristic, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada. As a morally irrelevant characteristic it cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.

One might respond that it is not membership in a biological category that matters morally, but rather the social meaning of those categories, meanings that structure not only the institutions we operate within, but how we conceptualize ourselves and our world. Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom. But the category “human” itself is morally contested. Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that makes humans white (see Fanon 1967; Kim 2015; Ko& Ko 2017). According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.

Like speciesism, human exceptionalism can be understood in different ways. The most common way of understanding it is to suggest that there are distinctly human capacities and it is on the basis of these capacities that humans have moral status and other animals do not. But which capacities mark out all and only humans as the kinds of beings that can be wronged? A number of candidate capacities have been proposed—developing family ties, solving social problems, expressing emotions, starting wars, having sex for pleasure, using language, or thinking abstractly, are just a few. As it turns out, none of these activities is uncontroversially unique to human. Both scholarly and popular work on animal behavior suggests that many of the activities that are thought to be distinct to humans occurs in non-humans. For example, many species of non-humans develop long lasting kinship ties—orangutan mothers stay with their young for eight to ten years and while they eventually part company, they continue to maintain their relationships. Less solitary animals, such as chimpanzees, baboons, wolves, and elephants maintain extended family units built upon complex individual relationships, for long periods of time. Meerkats in the Kalahari desert are known to sacrifice their own safety by staying with sick or injured family members so that the fatally ill will not die alone. All animals living in socially complex groups must solve various problems that inevitably arise in such groups. Canids and primates are particularly adept at it, yet even chickens and horses are known to recognize large numbers of individuals in their social hierarchies and to maneuver within them. One of the ways that non-human animals negotiate their social environments is by being particularly attentive to the emotional states of others around them. When a conspecific is angry, it is a good idea to get out of his way. Animals that develop life-long bonds are known to suffer from the death of their partners. Some are even said to die of sorrow. Darwin reported this in The Descent of Man : “So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds” (1871: 40). Jane Goodall’s report of the death of the healthy 8 year old chimpanzee Flint just three weeks after the death of his mother Flo also suggests that sorrow can have a devastating effect on non-human animals (see Goodall 2000: 140–141 in Bekoff 2000). Coyotes, elephants and killer whales are also among the species for which profound effects of grief have been reported (Bekoff 2000) and many dog owners can provide similar accounts. While the lives of many, perhaps most, non-humans in the wild are consumed with struggle for survival, aggression and battle, there are some non-humans whose lives are characterized by expressions of joy, playfulness, and a great deal of sex (Woods 2010). Recent studies in cognitive ethology have suggested that some non-humans engage in manipulative and deceptive activity, can construct “cognitive maps” for navigation, and some non-humans appear to understand symbolic representation and are able to use language. [ 1 ]

It appears that most of the capacities that are thought to distinguish humans as morally considerable beings, have been observed, often in less elaborate form, in the non-human world. Because human behavior and cognition share deep roots with the behavior and cognition of other animals, approaches that try to find sharp behavioral or cognitive boundaries between humans and other animals remain controversial. For this reason, attempts to establish human uniqueness by identifying certain capacities, are not the most promising when it comes to thinking hard about the moral status of animals.

1.3 Personhood

Nonetheless, there is something important that is thought to distinguish humans from non-humans that is not reducible to the observation of behavior best explained by possessing a certain capacity and that is our “personhood”. The notion of personhood identifies a category of morally considerable beings that is thought to be coextensive with humanity. Historically, Kant is the most noted defender of personhood as the quality that makes a being valuable and thus morally considerable (for a contemporary utilitarian discussion of personhood, see Varner 2012). Kant writes:

…every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will…Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves. (Kant [1785] 1998: [Ak 4: 428])

The fact that the human being can have the representation “I” raises him infinitely above all the other beings on earth. By this he is a person….that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, with which one may deal and dispose at one’s discretion. (Kant [1798] 2010: 239 [Ak 7: 127])

More recent work in a Kantian vein develops this idea. Christine Korsgaard, for example, argues that humans “uniquely” face a problem, the problem of normativity. This problem emerges because of the reflective structure of human consciousness. We can, and often do, think about our desires and ask ourselves “Are these desires reasons for action? Do these impulses represent the kind of things I want to act according to?” Our reflective capacities allow us and require us to step back from our mere impulses in order to determine when and whether to act on them. In stepping back we gain a certain distance from which we can answer these questions and solve the problem of normativity. We decide whether to treat our desires as reasons for action based on our conceptions of ourselves, on our “practical identities”. When we determine whether we should take a particular desire as a reason to act we are engaging in a further level of reflection, a level that requires an endorseable description of ourselves. This endorseable description of ourselves, this practical identity, is a necessary moral identity because without it we cannot view our lives as worth living or our actions as worth doing. Korsgaard suggests that humans face the problem of normativity in a way that non-humans apparently do not:

A lower animal’s attention is fixed on the world. Its perceptions are its beliefs and its desires are its will. It is engaged in conscious activities, but it is not conscious of them. That is, they are not the objects of its attention. But we human animals turn our attention on to our perceptions and desires themselves, on to our own mental activities, and we are conscious of them. That is why we can think about them…And this sets us a problem that no other animal has. It is the problem of the normative…. The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason. (Korsgaard 1996: 93)

Here, Korsgaard understands “reason” as “a kind of reflective success” and given that non-humans are thought to be unable to reflect in a way that would allow them this sort of success, it appears that they do not act on reasons, at least reasons of this kind. Since non-humans do not act on reasons they do not have a practical identity from which they reflect and for which they act. So humans can be distinguished from non-humans because humans, we might say, are sources of normativity and non-humans are not.

But arguably, Kant’s view of personhood does not distinguish all and only humans as morally considerable. Personhood is not, in fact, coextensive with humanity when understood as a general description of the group to which human beings belong. And the serious part of this problem is not that there may be some extra-terrestrials or deities who have rational capacities. The serious problem is that many humans are not persons. Some humans—i.e., infants, children, people in comas—do not have the rational, self-reflective capacities associated with personhood. This problem, unfortunately known in the literature as the problem of “marginal cases”, poses serious difficulties for “personhood” as the criterion of moral considerability. Many beings whose positive moral value we have deeply held intuitions about, and who we treat as morally considerable, will be excluded from consideration by this account.

There are three ways to respond to this counter-intuitive conclusion. One, which can be derived from one interpretation of Kant, is to suggest that non-persons are morally considerable indirectly. Though Kant believed that animals were mere things it appears he did not genuinely believe we could dispose of them any way we wanted. In the Lectures on Ethics he makes it clear that we have indirect duties to animals, duties that are not toward them, but in regard to them insofar as our treatment of them can affect our duties to persons.

If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. ([1784–5] 1997: 212 [Ak 27: 459])

And one could argue the same would be true of those human beings who are not persons. We disrespect our humanity when we act in inhumane ways towards non-persons, whatever their species.

But this indirect view is unsatisfying—it fails to capture the independent wrong that is being done to the non-person. When someone rapes a woman in a coma, or whips a severely brain damaged child, or sets a cat on fire, they are not simply disrespecting humanity or themselves as representatives of it, they are wronging these non-persons. So, a second way to avoid the counter-intuitive conclusion is to argue that such non-persons stand in the proper relations to “rational nature” such that they should be thought of as morally considerable. Allen Wood (1998) argues in this way and suggests that all beings that potentially have a rational nature, or who virtually have it, or who have had it, or who have part of it, or who have the necessary conditions of it, what he calls “the infrastructure of rational nature”, should be directly morally considerable. Insofar as a being stands in this relation to rational nature, they are the kinds of beings that can be wronged.

This response is not unlike that of noted animal rights proponent, Tom Regan, who argues that what is important for moral consideration are not the differences between humans and non-humans but the similarities. Regan argues that because persons share with certain non-persons (which includes those humans and non-humans who have a certain level of organized cognitive function) the ability to be experiencing subject of a life and to have an individual welfare that matters to them regardless of what others might think, both deserve moral consideration. Regan argues that subjects of a life:

want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own. (Regan 1985: 24)

A third way of addressing this problem has been taken up by Korsgaard who maintains that there is a big difference between those with normative, rational capacities and those without, but unlike Kant, believes both humans and non-humans are the proper objects of our moral concern. She argues that those without normative, rational capacities share certain “natural” capacities with persons, and these natural capacities are often the content of the moral demands that persons make on each other. She writes,

what we demand, when we demand … recognition, is that our natural concerns—the objects of our natural desires and interests and affections—be accorded the status of values, values that must be respected as far as possible by others. And many of those natural concerns—the desire to avoid pain is an obvious example—spring from our animal nature, not from our rational nature. (Korsgaard 2007: 7)

What moral agents construct as valuable and normatively binding is not only our rational or autonomous capacities, but the needs and desires we have as living, embodied beings. Insofar as these needs and desires are valuable for agents, the ability to experience similar needs and desires in patients should also be valued.

In the courts, all humans and some corporations are considered persons in the legal sense. But all animals, infants and adults, are not legal persons, but rather, under the law they are considered property. There have been a few attempts to change the legal status of some nonhuman animals from property to persons. The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) founded by Steven Wise, has filed a series of cases in the New York courts seeking to establish legal personhood for particular chimpanzees being held in the state, with the goal of protecting their rights to bodily integrity and liberty, and allow them to seek remedy, through their proxies, when those rights are violated. Chimpanzees are a good test case for establishing nonhuman legal personhood as they are, according to the documents filed by NhRP, autonomous beings with sophisticated cognitive abilities including

episodic memory, self-consciousness, self-knowing, self agency, referential and intentional communication, mental time-travel, numerosity, sequential learning, meditational learning, mental state modeling, visual perspective taking, understanding the experiences of others, intentional action, planning, imagination, empathy, metacognition, working memory, decision-making, imitation, deferred imitation, emulation, innovation, material, social, and symbolic culture, cross-modal perception, tool-use, tool-making, cause-and-effect. (petition of NhRP v. Samuel Stanley, p. 12, see Other Internet Resources )

The legal arguments to extend personhood beyond the human parallel more general ethical arguments that extend ethical consideration outward from those who occupy the moral center. Turning to empirical work designed to show that other animals are really similar to those considered legal persons, primatologists submitted affidavits attesting to what they have learned working with chimpanzees. Mary Lee Jensvold suggests

there are numerous parallels in the way chimpanzee and human communication skills develop over time, suggesting a similar unfolding cognitive process across the two species and an underlying neurobiological continuity. (Jensvold affidavit, p. 4, in Other Internet Resources )

James King notes

chimpanzees and humans resemble each other in terms of their ability to experience happiness and the way in which it relates to individual personality. (King affidavit, p. 8, in Other Internet Resources )

And Mathias Osvath makes remarkable claims about chimpanzee personhood:

Autonoetic consciousness gives an individual of any species an autobiographical sense of it self with a future and a past. Chimps and other great apes clearly possess an autobiographical self, as they are able to prepare themselves for future actions… they likely can, just as humans, be in pain over an anticipated future event that has yet to occur. For instance, confining someone in a prison or cage for a set time, or for life, would lose much of its power as punishment if that individual had no self-concept. Every moment would be a new moment with no conscious relation to the next. But, chimpanzees. and other great apes have a concept of their personal past and future and therefore suffer the pain of not being able to fulfill one’s goals or move around as one wants; like humans they experience the pain of anticipating a never-ending situation. (Osvath affidavit, pp. 4–7, in Other Internet Resources )

These claims, as well as those of others experts, identify the relevantly similar capacities that chimpanzees and other great apes share with humans and it is in virtue of these capacities that legal personhood is sought.

Using rational nature or cognitive capacities as the touchstone of moral considerability misses an important fact about animals, human and nonhuman. Our lives can go better or worse for us. Utilitarians have traditionally argued that the truly morally important feature of beings is unappreciated when we focus on personhood or the rational, self-reflective nature of humans, or the relation a being stands in to such nature, or being the subject of a life, or being legal persons. What is really important, utilitarians maintain, is the promotion of happiness, or pleasure, or the satisfaction of interests, and the avoidance of pain, or suffering, or frustration of interests. Bentham, one of the more forceful defenders of this sentientist view of moral considerability, famously wrote:

Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things . [original emphasis] … The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated … upon the same footing as … animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the ossacrum , are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ? (Bentham 1780/1789: chapter xvii, paragraph 6)

Contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer (1990, 1979 [1993]), suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Any being that has an interest in not suffering deserves to have that interest taken into account. And a non-human who acts to avoid pain can be thought to have just such an interest. Even contemporary Kantians have acknowledged the moral force of the experience of pain. Korsgaard, for example, writes “it is a pain to be in pain. And that is not a trivial fact” (1996: 154).

When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are perceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there is a reason, a reason to change its conditions. And you can no more hear the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person. Another animal can obligate you in exactly the same way another person can. …So of course we have obligations to animals. (Korsgaard 1996: 153)

When we encounter an animal in pain we recognize their claim on us, and thus beings who can suffer are morally considerable.

That non-human animals can make moral claims on us does not in itself indicate how such claims are to be assessed and conflicting claims adjudicated. Being morally considerable is like showing up on a moral radar screen—how strong the signal is or where it is located on the screen are separate questions. Of course, how one argues for the moral considerability of non-human animals will inform how we are to understand the force of an animal’s claims.

According to the view that an animal’s moral claim is equivalent to a moral right, any action that fails to treat the animal as a being with inherent worth would violate that animal’s right and is thus morally objectionable. According to the animal rights position, to treat an animal as a means to some human end, as many humans do when they eat animals or experiment on them, is to violate that animal’s right. As Tom Regan has written,

…animals are treated routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect, and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. (Regan 1985: 24).

The animal rights position is an absolutist position. Any being that is a subject of a life has inherent worth and the rights that protect such worth, and all subjects of a life have these rights equally. Thus any practice that fails to respect the rights of those animals who have them, e.g., eating animals, hunting animals, experimenting on animals, using animals for entertainment, is wrong, irrespective of human need, context, or culture.

The utilitarian position on animals, most commonly associated with Peter Singer and popularly, though erroneously, referred to as an animal rights position, is actually quite distinct. Here the moral significance of the claims of animals depends on what other morally significant competing claims might be in play in any given situation. While the equal interests of all morally considerable beings are considered equally, the practices in question may end up violating or frustrating some interests but would not be considered morally wrong if, when all equal interests are considered, more of these interests are satisfied than frustrated. For utilitarians like Singer, what matters are the strength and nature of interests, not whose interests these are. So, if the only options available in order to save the life of one morally considerable being is to cause harm, but not death, to another morally considerable being, then according to a utilitarian position, causing this harm may be morally justifiable. Similarly, if there are two courses of action, one which causes extreme amounts of suffering and ultimate death, and one which causes much less suffering and painless death, then the latter would be morally preferable to the former.

Consider factory farming, the most common method used to convert animal bodies into relatively inexpensive food in industrialized societies today. An estimated 8 billion animals in the United States are born, confined, biologically manipulated, transported and ultimately slaughtered each year so that humans can consume them. The conditions in which these animals are raised and the method of slaughter causes vast amounts of suffering (see, for example, Mason & Singer 1980 [1990]). Given that animals suffer under such conditions and assuming that suffering is not in their interests, then the practice of factory farming would only be morally justifiable if its abolition were to cause greater suffering or a greater amount of interest frustration. Certainly humans who take pleasure in eating animals will find it harder to satisfy these interests in the absence of factory farms; it may cost more and require more effort to obtain animal products. The factory farmers, and the industries that support factory farming, will also have certain interests frustrated if factory farming were to be abolished. How much interest frustration and interest satisfaction would be associated with the end to factory farming is largely an empirical question. But utilitarians are not making unreasonable predictions when they argue that on balance the suffering and interest frustration that animals experience in modern day meat production is greater than the suffering that humans would endure if they had to alter their current practices.

Importantly, the utilitarian argument for the moral significance of animal suffering in meat production is not an argument for vegetarianism. If an animal lived a happy life and was painlessly killed and then eaten by people who would otherwise suffer hunger or malnutrition by not eating the animal, then painlessly killing and eating the animal would be the morally justified thing to do. In many parts of the world where economic, cultural, or climate conditions make it virtually impossible for people to sustain themselves on plant based diets, killing and eating animals that previously led relatively unconstrained lives and are painlessly killed, would not be morally objectionable. The utilitarian position can thus avoid certain charges of cultural chauvinism and moralism, charges that the animal rights position apparently cannot avoid.

It might be objected that to suggest that it is morally acceptable to hunt and eat animals for those people living in arctic regions, or for nomadic cultures, or for poor rural peoples, for example, is to potentially condone painlessly killing other morally considerable beings, like humans, for food consumption in similar situations. If violating the rights of an animal can be morally tolerated, especially a right to life, then similar rights violations can be morally tolerated. In failing to recognize the inviolability of the moral claims of all morally considerable beings, utilitarianism cannot accommodate one of our most basic prima facie principles, namely that killing a morally considerable being is wrong.

There are at least two replies to this sort of objection. The first appeals to the negative side effects that killing may promote. If, to draw on an overused and sadly sophomoric counter-example, one person can be kidnapped and painlessly killed in order to provide body parts for four individuals who will die without them, there will inevitably be negative side-effects that all things considered would make the kidnapping wrong. Healthy people, knowing they could be used for spare parts, might make themselves unhealthy to avoid such a fate or they may have so much stress and fear that the overall state of affairs would be worse than that in which four people died. Appealing to side-effects when it comes to the wrong of killing is certainly plausible, but it fails to capture what is directly wrong with killing.

A more satisfying reply would have us adopt what might be called a multi-factor perspective, one that takes into account the kinds of interest that are possible for certain kinds of morally considerable beings, the content of interests of the beings in question, their relative weight, and the context of those who have them. Consider a seal who has spent his life freely roaming the oceans and ice flats and who is suddenly and painlessly killed to provide food for a human family struggling to survive a bitter winter in far northern climes. While it is probably true that the seal had an immediate interest in avoiding suffering, it is less clear that the seal has a future directed interest in continued existence. If the seal lacks this future directed interest, then painlessly killing him does not violate this interest. The same cannot be said for the human explorer who finds himself face to face with a hungry Inuit family. Persons generally have interests in continued existence, interests that, arguably, non-persons do not have. So one factor that can be appealed to is that non-persons may not have the range of interests that persons do.

An additional factor is the type of interest in question. We can think of interests as scalar; crucial interests are weightier than important interests, important interests are weightier than replaceable interests, and all are weightier than trivial interests or mere whims. When there is a conflict of interests, crucial interests will always override important interests, important interests will always override replaceable interests, etc. So if an animal has an interest in not suffering, which is arguably a crucial interest, or at least an important one, and a person has an interest in eating that animal when there are other things to eat, meaning that interest is replaceable, then the animal has the stronger interest and it would be wrong to violate that interest by killing the animal for food if there is another source of food available.

Often, however, conflicts of interests are within the same category. The Inuit’s interest in food is crucial and the explorer’s interest in life is crucial. If we assume that the explorer cannot otherwise provide food for the hunter, then it looks as if there is a conflict within the same category. If you take the interests of an indigenous hunter’s whole family into account, then their combined interest in their own survival appears to outweigh the hapless explorer’s interest in continued existence. Indeed, if painlessly killing and eating the explorer were the only way for the family to survive, then perhaps this action would be morally condoned. But this is a rather extreme sort of example, one in which even our deepest held convictions are strained. So it is quite hard to know what to make of the clash between what a utilitarian would condone and what our intuitions tell us we should believe here. Our most basic prima facie principles arise and are accepted under ordinary circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances are precisely those in which such principles or precepts give way. [ 2 ]

The multi-factor utilitarian perspective is particularly helpful when considering the use of animals in medical research. According to the animal rights position, the use of animals in experimental procedures is a clear violation of their rights—they are being used as a mere means to some possible end—and thus animal rights proponents are in favor of the abolition of all laboratory research. The utilitarian position, particularly one that incorporates some kind of multi-factor perspective, might allow some research on animals under very specific conditions. Before exploring what a utilitarian might condone in the way of animal experimentation, let us first quickly consider what would be morally prohibited. All research that involves invasive procedures, constant confinement, and ultimate death can be said to violate the animal’s crucial interests. Thus any experiments that are designed to enhance the important, replaceable, or trivial interests of humans or other animals would be prohibited. That would mean that experiments for cosmetics or household products are prohibited, as there are non-animal tested alternatives and many options already available for consumers. Certain psychological experiments, such as those in which infant primates are separated from their mothers and exposed to frightening stimuli in an effort to understand problems teenagers have when they enter high school, would also come into question. There are many examples of experiments that violate an animal’s crucial interests in the hopes of satisfying the lesser interests of some other morally considerable being, all of which would be objectionable from this perspective.

There are some laboratory experiments, however, that from a multi-factor utilitarian perspective may be permitted. These are experiments in which the probability of satisfying crucial or important interests for many who suffer from some debilitating or fatal disease is high, and the numbers of non-human animals whose crucial interests are violated is low. The psychological complexity of the non-humans may also be significant in determining whether the experiment is morally justified. In the case of experimenting in these limited number of cases, presumably a parallel argument could be made about experimenting on humans. If the chances are very high that experimenting on one human, who is a far superior experimental animal when it comes to human disease, can prevent great suffering or death in many humans, then the utilitarian may, if side effects are minimal, condone such an experiment. Of course, it is easier to imagine this sort of extreme case in the abstract, what a utilitarian would think actually morally justified, again depends on the specific empirical data.

In sum, the animal rights position takes the significance of morally considerable claims to be absolute. Thus, any use of animals that involves a disregard for their moral claims is problematic. The significance of an animal’s morally considerable interests according to a utilitarian is variable. Whether an action is morally justified or permissible will depend on a number of factors. The utilitarian position on animals would condemn a large number of practices that involve the suffering and death of billions of animals, but there are cases in which some use of non-human animals, and perhaps even human animals, may be morally justified (Gruen 2011: ch. 4; Gilbert, Kaebnick, & Murray 2012).

Given the long-standing view that non-humans are mere things, there are still many who reject the arguments presented here for the moral considerability of non-humans and the significance of their interests. Nonetheless, most now realize that the task of arguing that humans have a unique and exclusive moral status is rather difficult. Yet even amongst those who do view animals as within the sphere of moral concern, there is disagreement about the nature and usefulness of the arguments presented on behalf of the moral status of animals.

Increasingly, philosophers are arguing that while our behavior towards animals is indeed subject to moral scrutiny, the kinds of ethical arguments that are usually presented frame the issues in the wrong way. Some philosophers suggest that rational argumentation fails to capture those features of moral experience that allow us to really see why treating animals badly is wrong. The point, according to commentators such as Stephen R.L. Clark and Cora Diamond, for example, is that members of our communities, however we conceive of them, pull on us and it is in virtue of this pull that we recognize what is wrong with cruelty. Animals are individuals with whom we share a common life and this recognition allows us to see them as they are. Eating animals is wrong not because it is a violation of the animal’s rights or because on balance such an act creates more suffering than other acts, but rather because in eating animals or using them in other harmful, violent ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display.

According to some in the virtue ethics tradition, carefully worked out arguments in which the moral considerability and moral significance of animals are laid out will have little if any grip on our thoughts and actions. Rather, by perceiving the attitudes that underlie the use and abuse of non-human animals as shallow or cruel, one interested in living a virtuous life will change their attitudes and come to reject treating animals as food or tools for research. As Rosalind Hursthouse recognized after having been exposed to alternative ways of seeing animals:

I began to see [my attitudes] that related to my conception of flesh-foods as unnecessary, greedy, self-indulgent, childish, my attitude to shopping and cooking in order to produce lavish dinner parties as parochial, gross, even dissolute. I saw my interest and delight in nature programmes about the lives of animals on television and my enjoyment of meat as side by side at odds with one another…Without thinking animals had rights, I began to see both the wild ones and the ones we usually eat as having lives of their own, which they should be left to enjoy. And so I changed. My perception of the moral landscape and where I and the other animals were situated in it shifted. (Hursthouse 2000: 165–166; see also Diamond 2001 [especially chs. 11 and 13], and Clarke 1977)

Alice Crary argues that shifting perceptions of our moral landscapes occur because these landscapes, and more precisely the rich worlds of those who inhabit them, are not morally neutral. The characteristics that philosophers tend to look for in other animals to determine whether or not they are morally considerable, according to Crary, are already infused with moral importance, “human beings and other animals have empirically discoverable moral characteristics” (my emphasis, 2016: 85) that are, as she puts it “inside ethics”. These values often sneak in under a supposedly neutral gloss. By explicitly locating these characteristics inside ethics, the texture, quality, and purposes of our ethical reflection on moral considerability changes. Arriving at an adequate empirical understanding requires non-neutral methods, identifying historical and cultural perspectives as shaping how we consider other animals morally. What ethical questions we think are important and how we frame and answer them, will be different if we see our lives and the lives of other animals as already imbued with moral values.

Other feminist philosophers have taken issue with the supposedly morally neutral methods of argumentation used to establish the moral status of animals. For many feminists the traditional methods of rational argumentation fail to take into account the feelings of sympathy or empathy that humans have towards non-humans, feelings they believe are central to a full account of what we owe non-humans and why (see Adams & Donovan 1995; Donovan & Adams 2007; Adams & Gruen 2014).

Feminist philosophers have also challenged the individualism that is central in the arguments for the moral status of animals. Rather than identifying intrinsic or innate properties that non-humans share with humans, some feminists have argued instead that we ought to understand moral status in relational terms given that moral recognition is invariably a social practice. As Elizabeth Anderson has written:

Moral considerability is not an intrinsic property of any creature, nor is it supervenient on only its intrinsic properties, such as its capacities. It depends, deeply, on the kind of relations they can have with us. (Anderson 2004: 289).

And these relationships needn’t be direct. The reach of human activity has expanded across the entire globe and humans are entangled with each other and other animals in myriad ways. We participate in activities and institutions that directly or indirectly harm others by creating negative experiences, depriving them of their well-being, or denying them opportunities to be who they are and pursue what they care about. Philosophers Elisa Aaltola and Lori Gruen have argued for refining our empathetic imagination in order to improve our relationships with each other and other animals.

Even though it is challenging to understand what it is like to be another, and even though we are limited by our inevitable anthropocentric perspectives, being in respectful ethical relation involves attempting to understand and respond to another’s needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and perspectives. What Gruen calls, “entangled empathy” is a process that involves both affect and cognition (Gruen 2015). Individuals who are empathizing with others respond to the other’s condition and reflectively imagine themselves in the distinct position of the other while staying attentive to both similarities and differences between herself and her situation and that of the fellow creature with whom she is empathizing. Entangled empathy involves paying critical attention to the broader conditions that may negatively affect the experiences and flourishing of those with whom one is empathizing, and this requires those of us empathizing to attend to things we might not have otherwise. It therefore also enhances our own experiences, develops our moral imagination, and helps us to become more sensitive perceivers.

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• AnimalLaw.com: International Institute for Animal Law (National Anti-Vivisection Society)
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Animal Rights and the Ethics of Testing

• University of Southern California
• Animal Rights
• Endangered Species

Animals have been used as test subjects for medical experiments and other scientific investigations for hundreds of years. With the rise of the modern animal rights movement in the 1970s and '80s, however, many people began to question the ethics of using living creatures for such tests. Although animal testing remains commonplace today, public support for such practices has declined in recent years.

Testing Regulations

In the United States, the  Animal Welfare Act  sets certain minimum requirements for the humane treatment of non-human animals in laboratories and other settings. It was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. The law, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sets "minimum standards of care and treatment be provided for certain animals bred for commercial sale, used in research, transported commercially, or exhibited to the public."

However, anti-testing advocates rightfully claim that this law has limited enforcement power. For example, the AWA explicitly excludes from protection all rats and mice, which make up approximately 95 percent of the animals used in laboratories. To address this, a number of amendments have been passed in subsequent years. In 2016, for example, the Toxic Substances Control Act included language that encouraged the use of "non-animal alternative testing methodologies."

The AWA also requires institutions that perform vivisection to establish committees that are supposed to oversee and approve the use of animals, making sure that non-animal alternatives are considered. Activists counter that many of these oversight panels are ineffective or biased in favor of animal experiments. Furthermore, the AWA does not prohibit invasive procedures or the killing of the animals when the experiments are over.

Estimates vary from 10 million to 100 million animals used for testing worldwide on an annual basis, but there are few sources of reliable data available. According to The Baltimore Sun , every drug test requires at least 800 animal test subjects. 

The Animal Rights Movement

The first law in the U.S. prohibiting the abuse of animals was enacted in 1641 in the colony of Massachusetts. It banned mistreatment of animals "kept for man's use." But it wasn't until the early 1800s that people began advocating for animal rights in both the U.S. and the U.K. The first major animal welfare state-sponsored legislation in the U.S. established the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York in 1866.

Most scholars say the modern animal rights movement began in 1975 with the publication of "Animal Rights" by Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher. Singer argued that animals could suffer just as humans do and therefore deserved to be treated with similar care, minimizing pain whenever possible. To treat them differently and say that experimentation on non-human animals is justified but experimentation on humans is not would be speciesist.

U.S. philosopher Tom Regan went even farther in his 1983 text "The Case for Animal Rights." In it, he argued that animals were individual beings just as humans are, with emotions and intellect. In the following decades, organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and retailers such as The Body Shop have become strong anti-testing advocates.

In 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal rights legal organization, petitioned New York courts on behalf of four chimpanzees. The filings argued that the chimps had a legal right to personhood, and therefore deserved to be freed. The three cases were repeatedly rejected or thrown out in lower courts. In 2017, the NRO announced it would appeal to the New York State Court of Appeals.

The Future of Animal Testing

Animal rights activists frequently argue that ending vivisection would not end medical progress because non-animal research would continue. They point to recent developments in stem-cell technology, which some researchers say could one day replace animal tests. Other advocates also say tissue cultures, epidemiological studies, and ethical human experimentation with fully informed consent could also find a place in a new medical or commercial testing environment.

Resources and Further Reading

Davis, Janet M. " The History of Animal Protection in the United States " Organization of American Historians . Nov. 2015.

Funk, Cary and Raine, Lee. " Opinion About the Use of Animals in Testing ."  Pew Research Center. 1 Jul. 2015.

United States Department of Agriculture. " Animal Welfare Act ." USDA.org

" Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing? " ProCon.org. Updated 11 Oct. 2017.

• Historical Timeline of the Animal Rights Movement
• The Argument for Animal Rights
• Overview of the Animal Welfare Act
• Basic Tenets of Animal Rights
• Undercover Investigation Alleges Animal Suffering at Toxicology Lab
• The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues
• What Are Animal Rights?
• Everything You Need to Know About Animal Testing for Cosmetics
• Is Pet Ownership Ethical?
• Are Zoos Ethical? Arguments for and Against Keeping Animals in Zoos
• What Is a Puppy Mill? Why Are They Bad for Dogs?
• Noise Pollution: Environmental Impact and What You Can Do
• What is the LD50 or Lethal Dose 50 Test?
• What's Wrong With Aquariums?
• National Monuments Designated By President Obama
• How Many Animals Do Humans Kill Each Year?

The ethics of animal research

Animal use has been a hotly contested moral issue for hundreds of years. In the 17th century René Descartes, a French philosopher, argued that animals were no more than automata and could not feel pain. This was rejected by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th Century who extended his utilitarian conception of rights to animals due to their capability to suffer. This was expanded by Peter Singer, in 1975, who wrote in Animal Liberation that arbitrarily treating humans above animals – particularly in marginal cases where animals may be as intelligent as young children or severely cognitively-impaired adults – was not justified. Animal rights philosophy is distinct from proponents of animal welfare who argue that we must provide adequate conditions for animals in our care – a position held by the RSPCA among others. The scientific community has often been the driving force for these improvements, arguing that better conditions for animals was conducive to better, more replicable, scientific results.

Animal Liberation (Peter Singer) was an immensely influential book which discussed the ethics of animal use (including animal research). It is often considered the forerunner to the animal liberation movement. This is, perhaps, the core piece of literature on  animal rights philosophy.  - Singer, P., 1995. Animal Liberation. 2nd Ed. London: Pimlico. Do Animals Have Rights? (Alison Hills) is an objective assessment of the case for whether animals should have rights and what rights those should be. Hills discusses their ability of mind, whether all animals should be regarded as equal, and what that means. Hills concludes with a graded scale of animals rights.  - Hills, A., 2005. Do Animals Have Rights? Cambridge: Icon Books. The Case for Animal Rights (Tom Reagan) is another major piece of philosophical writing which argues for animal rights on the basis of their similar cognitive abilities.  - Reagan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy (Wesley J Smith) takes its title from a quote from PETA president, Ingrid Newkirk. It is a useful book covering many issues of animal rights activism and philosophy. In Chapter 18, Smith creates his argument in favour of animal research on the basis of human rights and duties.  - Smith, W.J., 2009. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. New York: Encounter Books. The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice (Beauchamp et al.) investigates a number of difficult issues regarding the use of animals in society. Through 16 case studies, and plenty of ethical theory, the authors attempt to navigate the moral minefields involved.  - Beauchamp, T.L., Orlans, F.B., & Dresser, R. Morton D. and Gluck J. 2008.  The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. An Odyssey with Animals (Adrian Morrison) investigates the relationship between humans and animals, and explains why efforts to halt animal research would be damaging to human health.  - Morrison, A., 2009.  An Odyssey with Animals. New York: Oxford University Press

Online resources

Ethics (Pro-Test) looks at the question of whether animals have rights, concluding that their lack of understanding does not allow them to participate in the system of rights and duties.  - Pro-Test.  Ethics. [online]Available at:  http://pro-test.org.uk/facts.php?lt=a The ethics of research involving animals (Nuffield Council on Bioethics) is an independent report on the use of animals for medical science. Although it looks at the whole issue, it pays particular attention to the ethics, specifically in chapter three.  - Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2006. The ethics of research involving animals. [online] London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Available at:

https://nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/The-ethics-of-research-involving-animals-full-report.pdf

Animal Rights Beliefs (SR) provides a polemic disagreeing with Bentham’s basis of animal rights. It also investigates the question of whether animals should be considered “innocent”.  - Speaking of Research. Animal Rights Beliefs. [online] Available at:  http://speakingofresearch.com/extremism-undone/ar-beliefs/ The Ethics of Animal Research (Simon Festing and Robin Wilkinson) provides an insight into the ethics of animal research, including a look at public opinion and the animal welfare regulations. It also has a useful and extensive references list.  - Festing S. and Wilkinson R., 2007. The Ethics of Animal Research. EMBO reports. Available at: www.nature.com/embor/journal/v8/n6/full/7400993.html The moral relevance of human intelligence (Dario Ringach) – this blog post by Prof. Ringach discusses the arguments made by animal rights activists about marginal cases – how do we compare the moral value of a baby, or brain damaged person to a mouse or monkey.  - Ringach, D., 2012. The moral relevance of human intelligence.  Speaking of Research. [blog] 12 Sept, Available at:  http://speakingofresearch.com/2012/09/12/the-moral-relevance-of-human-intelligence/ Click on one of the links below to see other topics on animal research

• History of animal research
• Ethics of animal experiments
• Costs and benefits of research
• Regulatory systems and the 3Rs
• Animal rights activism and extremism
• General Websites

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• Book Review
• Published: 01 November 2001

Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research

• Judith K Blackshaw 1  

Heredity volume  87 ,  page 609 ( 2001 ) Cite this article

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Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research.

E. F. Paul and J. Paul. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, USA. 2001. Pp. 224. Price $49.95, hardback. ISBN 0-7658-0025-X

This thought-provoking book comes out of the Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, an independent corporation established to promote advanced research in political philosophy and in philosophical analysis of public policy questions. The use of animals for medical research is being threatened by animal rights activists who propose severe restrictions or abolition of experimental work.

In their essays, the eleven American authors challenge many flawed perceptions promoted by animal rights groups. These include misrepresentation of historical facts, and the contributions to human and animal health, by the use of experimental animals. Fortunately, activists efforts so far have not slowed down progress of biomedical and pharmacological research. In much of the world with epidemiological and nutritional challenges any animal activist agenda to shut down or hinder animal research is, as one author comments “fanatical, even suicidal”. Several authors go further and argue that to deny much of the world's population hope for vaccines and other medical cures is inhumanity towards humans.

Some animal rights groups concede that applied research is justifiable but that basic research should be prohibited. As the author of one essay points out, this view jeopardises both the advancement of knowledge and the remediation of human disease.

The question is raised of how human and animal interests can be balanced. The European view gives greater significance to animal interests than the American approach. However, both are closer to the human-priority view than either the UK or German statutes, which are more towards equality in human and animal interests.

Several authors argue from the evolutionary perspective in defending animal experimentation. They suggest that to disallow the acquisition of medical and agricultural knowledge would be a maladaptive strategy, that may endanger human survival. The philosophical bases of the animal rights groups are discussed and the reader is required to carefully follow often unfamiliar arguments. However the end result is well worthwhile.

At the end of the book's introduction the hope is expressed that, ‘these essays will advance public debate on this vital issue.’ It is hard to imagine that the general public will read such a book, but hopefully the scientists and students who carry out animal based research will use the arguments when explaining and justifying their research.

There is a useful index and I found the endnotes for each chapter interesting. I would have liked an alphabetical list of literature references at the end of the book.

It becomes evident after reading this book that animal rights movements are only sustainable in affluent societies. It is the responsibility of these societies to work towards the alleviation of diseases, which much of the world suffers. This book should be welcomed by the research communities in all countries where animal based research is conducted.

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Blackshaw, J. Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research. Heredity 87 , 609 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2540.2001.0809a.x

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2540.2001.0809a.x

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Is Animal Testing Ever Justified?

The E.P.A. recently said it would move away from requiring the testing of potentially harmful chemicals on animals. Do you support the decision?

By Natalie Proulx

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

On Sept. 10, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would move away from requiring the testing of potentially harmful chemicals on animals, a decision that was hailed by animal rights groups but criticized by environmentalists and researchers who said the practice was necessary to rigorously safeguard human health.

What are your thoughts on animal testing? Do you think it is ever justified? Why or why not?

In “ E.P.A. Says It Will Drastically Reduce Animal Testing ,” Mihir Zaveri, Mariel Padilla and Jaclyn Peiser write about the decision:

The E.P.A. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the agency plans to reduce the amount of studies that involve mammal testing by 30 percent by 2025, and to eliminate the studies entirely by 2035, though some may still be approved on a case-by-case basis. The agency said it would also invest $4.25 million in projects at four universities and a medical center that are developing alternate ways of testing chemicals that do not involve animals. “We can protect human health and the environment by using cutting-edge, ethically sound science in our decision-making that efficiently and cost-effectively evaluates potential effects without animal testing,” Mr. Wheeler said in a memo announcing the changes. The E.P.A. has for decades required testing on a variety of animals — including rats, dogs, birds and fish — to gauge their toxicity before the chemicals can be bought, sold or used in the environment.

The article continues:

The practice of testing with animals has long prompted complex debates driven by passionate views on morality and scientific imperative. Reaction to Tuesday’s announcement was no different. “We are really excited as this has been something we’ve wanted for quite some time,” said Kitty Block, the president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, an animal protection organization. “The alternatives are the future. They’re more efficient and save lives.” Kathleen Conlee, the vice president of animal research issues at the Humane Society, said the E.P.A.’s move is “broad-sweeping and significant.” “This is the first time a government agency has made such a commitment and timelined its specific goals along the way,” Ms. Conlee said. “There’s been a lot of positive action among other federal agencies, but we want to see all government agencies take this step.” Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s school of medicine, said current alternatives to animal testing are somewhat useful. But Dr. Woodruff, who worked at the E.P.A. from 1994 to 2007, said only animal testing — a process honed over decades — was robust enough to gauge chemicals’ impacts on people of various ages, genetics and health backgrounds. “I definitely think we should be investing more in this research,” she said, referring to alternative testing. “But it’s really not ready for making decisions yet — at least the way that E.P.A. is making decisions.” Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said she was very concerned by the announcement. Dr. Sass said animals were still necessary to study chronic conditions, like cancer and infertility. Cells in a petri dish cannot yet replace whole living systems, she said. “The E.P.A.’s deadline is arbitrary,” Dr. Sass said. “Our interest isn’t in speed, it’s getting it right. We want proper animal testing because we don’t want harmful chemicals to end up in our food, air and water.”

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Do you support the decision by the E.P.A. to move away from requiring the testing of potentially harmful chemicals on animals? Or do you think animal testing is still necessary to regulate harmful substances that can have adverse effects on humans?

How important is it to you that the toxicity of chemicals and other environmental contaminants is rigorously studied and regulated? Why? Do you think not testing on animals hinders those efforts?

The Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs are among the government agencies that still rely on animal testing. Do you think animal testing is important in these sectors or any others? Why or why not?

Do you think animal testing is ever justified? If so, what should be the criteria for when, how and on what animals testing is done?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Animal Testing

Argumentative Essays on Animal Testing

Hook examples for animal testing essays, the ethical dilemma hook.

Begin your essay by presenting the ethical dilemma surrounding animal testing. Explore the moral questions it raises and the conflicting viewpoints of proponents and opponents.

The Historical Perspective Hook

Take your readers on a journey through the history of animal testing. Discuss its origins, evolution, and its role in scientific and medical advancements over time.

The Scientific Advancements Hook

Highlight the scientific breakthroughs and discoveries that have resulted from animal testing. Discuss how it has contributed to medical treatments, vaccines, and the understanding of diseases.

The Alternatives and Innovations Hook

Explore alternative methods and innovations in research that aim to replace or reduce the use of animals in testing. Discuss advancements like in vitro testing and computer modeling.

The Animal Welfare Hook

Focus on the welfare and ethical treatment of animals used in testing. Discuss regulations, guidelines, and efforts to minimize harm and suffering in research.

The Legal and Regulatory Landscape Hook

Examine the legal and regulatory framework surrounding animal testing in different countries. Discuss laws, restrictions, and their enforcement.

The Public Opinion and Activism Hook

Discuss public perceptions of animal testing and the role of animal rights activists in advocating for change. Highlight notable campaigns and their impact.

The Unintended Consequences Hook

Explore unintended consequences or risks associated with animal testing, such as potential harm to humans due to species differences or the limitations of animal models.

The Future of Research Hook

Discuss the future of scientific research and the possibilities for reducing or eliminating animal testing. Explore emerging technologies and trends in biomedical research.

The Personal Story Hook

Share a personal or anecdotal story related to animal testing, such as the experiences of a researcher, activist, or someone affected by medical advancements achieved through animal testing.

Persuasive Essay Against Animal Testing

The negative consequences of animal testing, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

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Ethical Statement for Animal Testing

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Discussion Whether Animals Testing is Necessary

An argument favoring the use of animals in testing and the benefits it has brought, animal testing in modern world, pros and cons of animal testing: the conflicting debate, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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The Ethics of Animal Testing: an Argument Against Its Practice

Discussion: should animals be used for scientific research, the arguments concerning animal testing, why animal testing should be viewed as beneficial, saving the animals: alternative ways to test products, discussion on whether scientists should be allowed to test products on animals, the arguments why we should not test on animals, reasons why animal testing should be forbidden, why we should not continue test on animals, arguments for the reduction of animal testing, the problem of human cruelty to animals, how animal testing benefits us from diseases, stop the cruel and unnecessary animal testing, animal testing and alternatives for developing cruelty-free makeup, animals should not be a part of scientific research, worldwide problem of animal testing, analysis of the perspectives in support for animal testing and against it, animal testing in the united states, animal testing in the world, arguments for eliminating the use of animal testing.

Animal testing, referred to as animal experimentation, animal research, or in vivo testing, involves the utilization of animals other than humans in scientific experiments aimed at manipulating the factors influencing the behavior or biological processes being investigated.

Throughout history, the practice of animal testing has deep roots dating back centuries. The earliest recorded instances can be traced back to ancient civilizations, where animals were used for various scientific and medical purposes. The Greek physician Galen, during the second century AD, conducted experiments on animals to understand human anatomy and physiology. However, the formal establishment of animal testing as a systematic approach began to take shape during the 19th century with the emergence of modern medical research. In the late 1800s, advances in scientific knowledge and technology led to an increased demand for animal testing in various fields, including medicine, toxicology, and physiology. The development of anesthesia further facilitated the experimentation on animals by reducing pain and discomfort. Throughout the 20th century, animal testing became more widespread and institutionalized, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry.

Public opinion on animal testing is a complex and diverse topic, with viewpoints spanning a wide spectrum. While there are those who support the use of animals in scientific research for the advancement of human knowledge and medical breakthroughs, others express strong opposition due to ethical concerns and the perceived mistreatment of animals. Some people argue that animal testing is necessary for the development of life-saving treatments and the improvement of human health. They believe that animals provide valuable insights into human biology and the effectiveness of potential therapies. On the other hand, opponents of animal testing argue that it is cruel and unnecessary, advocating for alternative methods such as in vitro testing, computer modeling, and human cell-based assays. Public opinion on animal testing often hinges on the balance between scientific progress and animal welfare. The growing awareness of animal rights and ethical considerations has fueled debates and discussions surrounding the topic. As society becomes more conscious of animal welfare, there is an increasing demand for alternative testing methods and greater transparency in the treatment of animals involved in research. Ultimately, public opinion plays a crucial role in shaping policies and regulations surrounding animal testing.

1. Scientific advancement. 2. Human health and safety. 3. Understanding diseases. 4. Regulatory requirements. 5. Animal welfare improvements.

1. Ethical concerns. 2. Inadequate human relevance. 3. Availability of alternatives. 4. Animal welfare. 5. Speciesism and moral status.

One example of media representation is the documentary "Earthlings" directed by Shaun Monson. This influential film explores different aspects of animal exploitation, including animal testing, and highlights the ethical concerns surrounding the practice. It has garnered widespread attention and prompted discussions about the treatment of animals in scientific research. Social media platforms have also become powerful tools for activists and organizations to share information and advocate for alternatives to animal testing. Hashtags like #StopAnimalTesting and #CrueltyFree have gained traction, raising awareness and encouraging conversations on the topic.

The topic of animal testing is important due to its ethical, scientific, and societal implications. From an ethical standpoint, it raises profound questions about the treatment of sentient beings and the moral responsibility we have towards animals. It prompts us to consider the balance between scientific progress and animal welfare, urging us to explore alternative methods that minimize harm. Scientifically, animal testing has been instrumental in advancing medical knowledge and developing treatments for various diseases. However, it is essential to continually evaluate its effectiveness, limitations, and potential alternatives to ensure both human and animal well-being. Furthermore, the issue of animal testing has societal implications as it reflects our values and priorities as a society. It prompts discussions about our relationship with animals, the extent of their rights, and the importance of promoting more humane practices.

The topic of animal testing is worth writing an essay about due to its complex nature and the multitude of perspectives it encompasses. It is a subject that elicits strong emotions and raises critical ethical, scientific, and social questions. Writing an essay on animal testing allows for an in-depth exploration of these issues and encourages critical thinking and analysis. By delving into the topic, one can examine the ethical considerations surrounding the use of animals in experiments, weighing the potential benefits against the moral implications. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to evaluate the scientific validity and reliability of animal testing as a method for understanding human biology and developing medical treatments. Furthermore, an essay on animal testing opens avenues for discussing alternative approaches and advancements in technology that can reduce or replace animal experimentation. It allows for an exploration of the societal impact of animal testing, including public opinion, legislation, and the influence of media.

1. Each year, millions of animals are used in scientific experiments worldwide. According to estimates, over 100 million animals, including rabbits, mice, rats, dogs, and primates, are subjected to testing for various purposes, such as biomedical research, drug development, and toxicity testing. 2. Animal testing is not always reliable in predicting human outcomes. Studies have shown that there can be significant differences between animals and humans in terms of anatomy, physiology, and drug metabolism. This raises concerns about the validity and relevance of using animal models for understanding human diseases and developing treatments. 3. Alternatives to animal testing are emerging and gaining traction. Scientists and researchers are actively exploring innovative methods, such as in vitro cell cultures, computer modeling, and organ-on-a-chip technology, to simulate human biology and predict human responses more accurately. These alternative approaches aim to reduce or eliminate the need for animal testing while still ensuring the safety and efficacy of new products and treatments.

1. Abbott, A. (2005). Animal testing: more than a cosmetic change. Nature, 438(7065), 144-147. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA185466349&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00280836&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E513ffe31) 2. Doke, S. K., & Dhawale, S. C. (2015). Alternatives to animal testing: A review. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319016413001096 Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal, 23(3), 223-229. 3. Hajar, R. (2011). Animal testing and medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3123518/ Heart views: the official journal of the Gulf Heart Association, 12(1), 42. 4. Bottini, A. A., & Hartung, T. (2009). Food for thought… on the economics of animal testing. ALTEX-Alternatives to animal experimentation, 26(1), 3-16. (https://www.altex.org/index.php/altex/article/view/633) 5. Valappil, S. P., Misra, S. K., Boccaccini, A. R., & Roy, I. (2006). Biomedical applications of polyhydroxyalkanoates, an overview of animal testing and in vivo responses. Expert Review of Medical Devices, 3(6), 853-868. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1586/17434440.3.6.853) 6. File, S. E., Lippa, A. S., Beer, B., & Lippa, M. T. (2004). Animal tests of anxiety. Current protocols in neuroscience, 26(1), 8-3. (https://currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/0471142301.ns0803s26) 7. Madden, J. C., Enoch, S. J., Paini, A., & Cronin, M. T. (2020). A review of in silico tools as alternatives to animal testing: principles, resources and applications. Alternatives to Laboratory Animals, 48(4), 146-172. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0261192920965977) 8. Donnellan, L. (2006). Animal testing in cosmetics: recent developments in the European Union and the United States. Animal L., 13, 251. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/anim13&div=18&id=&page=)

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The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation

Nonhuman animal (“animal”) experimentation is typically defended by arguments that it is reliable, that animals provide sufficiently good models of human biology and diseases to yield relevant information, and that, consequently, its use provides major human health benefits. I demonstrate that a growing body of scientific literature critically assessing the validity of animal experimentation generally (and animal modeling specifically) raises important concerns about its reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology. The unreliability of animal experimentation across a wide range of areas undermines scientific arguments in favor of the practice. Additionally, I show how animal experimentation often significantly harms humans through misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and direction of resources away from more effective testing methods. The resulting evidence suggests that the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits and that resources would be better invested in developing human-based testing methods.

Introduction

Annually, more than 115 million animals are used worldwide in experimentation or to supply the biomedical industry. 1 Nonhuman animal (hereafter “animal”) experimentation falls under two categories: basic (i.e., investigation of basic biology and human disease) and applied (i.e., drug research and development and toxicity and safety testing). Regardless of its categorization, animal experimentation is intended to inform human biology and health sciences and to promote the safety and efficacy of potential treatments. Despite its use of immense resources, the animal suffering involved, and its impact on human health, the question of animal experimentation’s efficacy has been subjected to little systematic scrutiny. 2

Although it is widely accepted that medicine should be evidence based , animal experimentation as a means of informing human health has generally not been held, in practice, to this standard. This fact makes it surprising that animal experimentation is typically viewed as the default and gold standard of preclinical testing and is generally supported without critical examination of its validity. A survey published in 2008 of anecdotal cases and statements given in support of animal experimentation demonstrates how it has not and could not be validated as a necessary step in biomedical research, and the survey casts doubt on its predictive value. 3 I show that animal experimentation is poorly predictive of human outcomes, 4 that it is unreliable across a wide category of disease areas, 5 and that existing literature demonstrates the unreliability of animal experimentation, thereby undermining scientific arguments in its favor. I further show that the collective harms that result from an unreliable practice tip the ethical scale of harms and benefits against continuation in much, if not all, of experimentation involving animals. 6

Problems of Successful Translation to Humans of Data from Animal Experimentation

Although the unreliability and limitations of animal experimentation have increasingly been acknowledged, there remains a general confidence within much of the biomedical community that they can be overcome. 7 However, three major conditions undermine this confidence and explain why animal experimentation, regardless of the disease category studied, fails to reliably inform human health: (1) the effects of the laboratory environment and other variables on study outcomes, (2) disparities between animal models of disease and human diseases, and (3) species differences in physiology and genetics. I argue for the critical importance of each of these conditions.

The Influence of Laboratory Procedures and Environments on Experimental Results

Laboratory procedures and conditions exert influences on animals’ physiology and behaviors that are difficult to control and that can ultimately impact research outcomes. Animals in laboratories are involuntarily placed in artificial environments, usually in windowless rooms, for the duration of their lives. Captivity and the common features of biomedical laboratories—such as artificial lighting, human-produced noises, and restricted housing environments—can prevent species-typical behaviors, causing distress and abnormal behaviors among animals. 8 Among the types of laboratory-generated distress is the phenomenon of contagious anxiety. 9 Cortisone levels rise in monkeys watching other monkeys being restrained for blood collection. 10 Blood pressure and heart rates elevate in rats watching other rats being decapitated. 11 Routine laboratory procedures, such as catching an animal and removing him or her from the cage, in addition to the experimental procedures, cause significant and prolonged elevations in animals’ stress markers. 12 These stress-related changes in physiological parameters caused by the laboratory procedures and environments can have significant effects on test results. 13 Stressed rats, for example, develop chronic inflammatory conditions and intestinal leakage, which add variables that can confound data. 14

A variety of conditions in the laboratory cause changes in neurochemistry, genetic expression, and nerve regeneration. 15 In one study, for example, mice were genetically altered to develop aortic defects. Yet, when the mice were housed in larger cages, those defects almost completely disappeared. 16 Providing further examples, typical noise levels in laboratories can damage blood vessels in animals, and even the type of flooring on which animals are tested in spinal cord injury experiments can affect whether a drug shows a benefit. 17

In order to control for potential confounders, some investigators have called for standardization of laboratory settings and procedures. 18 One notable effort was made by Crabbe et al. in their investigation of the potential confounding influences of the laboratory environment on six mouse behaviors that are commonly studied in neurobehavioral experiments. Despite their “extraordinary lengths to equate test apparatus, testing protocols, and all possible features of animal husbandry” across three laboratories, there were systematic differences in test results in these labs. 19 Additionally, different mouse strains varied markedly in all behavioral tests, and for some tests the magnitude of genetic differences depended on the specific testing laboratory. The results suggest that there are important influences of environmental conditions and procedures specific to individual laboratories that can be difficult—perhaps even impossible—to eliminate. These influences can confound research results and impede extrapolation to humans.

The Discordance between Human Diseases and Animal Models of Diseases

The lack of sufficient congruence between animal models and human diseases is another significant obstacle to translational reliability. Human diseases are typically artificially induced in animals, but the enormous difficulty of reproducing anything approaching the complexity of human diseases in animal models limits their usefulness. 20 Even if the design and conduct of an animal experiment are sound and standardized, the translation of its results to the clinic may fail because of disparities between the animal experimental model and the human condition. 21

Stroke research presents one salient example of the difficulties in modeling human diseases in animals. Stroke is relatively well understood in its underlying pathology. Yet accurately modeling the disease in animals has proven to be an exercise in futility. To address the inability to replicate human stroke in animals, many assert the need to use more standardized animal study design protocols. This includes the use of animals who represent both genders and wide age ranges, who have comorbidities and preexisting conditions that occur naturally in humans, and who are consequently given medications that are indicated for human patients. 22 In fact, a set of guidelines, named STAIR, was implemented by a stroke roundtable in 1999 (and updated in 2009) to standardize protocols, limit the discrepancies, and improve the applicability of animal stroke experiments to humans. 23 One of the most promising stroke treatments later to emerge was NXY-059, which proved effective in animal experiments. However, the drug failed in clinical trials, despite the fact that the set of animal experiments on this drug was considered the poster child for the new experimental standards. 24 Despite such vigorous efforts, the development of STAIR and other criteria has yet to make a recognizable impact in clinical translation. 25

Under closer scrutiny, it is not difficult to surmise why animal stroke experiments fail to successfully translate to humans even with new guidelines. Standard stroke medications will likely affect different species differently. There is little evidence to suggest that a female rat, dog, or monkey sufficiently reproduces the physiology of a human female. Perhaps most importantly, reproducing the preexisting conditions of stroke in animals proves just as difficult as reproducing stroke pathology and outcomes. For example, most animals don’t naturally develop significant atherosclerosis, a leading contributor to ischemic stroke. In order to reproduce the effects of atherosclerosis in animals, researchers clamp their blood vessels or artificially insert blood clots. These interventions, however, do not replicate the elaborate pathology of atherosclerosis and its underlying causes. Reproducing human diseases in animals requires reproducing the predisposing diseases, also a formidable challenge. The inability to reproduce the disease in animals so that it is congruent in relevant respects with human stroke has contributed to a high failure rate in drug development. More than 114 potential therapies initially tested in animals failed in human trials. 26

Further examples of repeated failures based on animal models include drug development in cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and inflammatory conditions. Animal cancer models in which tumors are artificially induced have been the basic translational model used to study key physiological and biochemical properties in cancer onset and propagation and to evaluate novel treatments. Nevertheless, significant limitations exist in the models’ ability to faithfully mirror the complex process of human carcinogenesis. 27 These limitations are evidenced by the high (among the highest of any disease category) clinical failure rate of cancer drugs. 28 Analyses of common mice ALS models demonstrate significant differences from human ALS. 29 The inability of animal ALS models to predict beneficial effects in humans with ALS is recognized. 30 More than twenty drugs have failed in clinical trials, and the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved drug to treat ALS is Riluzole, which shows notably marginal benefit on patient survival. 31 Animal models have also been unable to reproduce the complexities of human TBI. 32 In 2010, Maas et al. reported on 27 large Phase 3 clinical trials and 6 unpublished trials in TBI that all failed to show human benefit after showing benefit in animals. 33 Additionally, even after success in animals, around 172 and 150 drug development failures have been identified in the treatment of human AD 34 and inflammatory diseases, 35 respectively.

The high clinical failure rate in drug development across all disease categories is based, at least in part, on the inability to adequately model human diseases in animals and the poor predictability of animal models. 36 A notable systematic review, published in 2007, compared animal experimentation results with clinical trial findings across interventions aimed at the treatment of head injury, respiratory distress syndrome, osteoporosis, stroke, and hemorrhage. 37 The study found that the human and animal results were in accordance only half of the time. In other words, the animal experiments were no more likely than a flip of the coin to predict whether those interventions would benefit humans.

In 2004, the FDA estimated that 92 percent of drugs that pass preclinical tests, including “pivotal” animal tests, fail to proceed to the market. 38 More recent analysis suggests that, despite efforts to improve the predictability of animal testing, the failure rate has actually increased and is now closer to 96 percent. 39 The main causes of failure are lack of effectiveness and safety problems that were not predicted by animal tests. 40

Usually, when an animal model is found wanting, various reasons are proffered to explain what went wrong—poor methodology, publication bias, lack of preexisting disease and medications, wrong gender or age, and so on. These factors certainly require consideration, and recognition of each potential difference between the animal model and the human disease motivates renewed efforts to eliminate these differences. As a result, scientific progress is sometimes made by such efforts. However, the high failure rate in drug testing and development, despite attempts to improve animal testing, suggests that these efforts remain insufficient to overcome the obstacles to successful translation that are inherent to the use of animals. Too often ignored is the well-substantiated idea that these models are, for reasons summarized here, intrinsically lacking in relevance to, and thus highly unlikely to yield useful information about, human diseases. 41

Interspecies Differences in Physiology and Genetics

Ultimately, even if considerable congruence were shown between an animal model and its corresponding human disease, interspecies differences in physiology, behavior, pharmacokinetics, and genetics would significantly limit the reliability of animal studies, even after a substantial investment to improve such studies. In spinal cord injury, for example, drug testing results vary according to which species and even which strain within a species is used, because of numerous interspecies and interstrain differences in neurophysiology, anatomy, and behavior. 42 The micropathology of spinal cord injury, injury repair mechanisms, and recovery from injury varies greatly among different strains of rats and mice. A systematic review found that even among the most standardized and methodologically superior animal experiments, testing results assessing the effectiveness of methylprednisolone for spinal cord injury treatment varied considerably among species. 43 This suggests that factors inherent to the use of animals account for some of the major differences in results.

Even rats from the same strain but purchased from different suppliers produce different test results. 44 In one study, responses to 12 different behavioral measures of pain sensitivity, which are important markers of spinal cord injury, varied among 11 strains of mice, with no clear-cut patterns that allowed prediction of how each strain would respond. 45 These differences influenced how the animals responded to the injury and to experimental therapies. A drug might be shown to help one strain of mice recover but not another. Despite decades of using animal models, not a single neuroprotective agent that ameliorated spinal cord injury in animal tests has proven efficacious in clinical trials to date. 46

Further exemplifying the importance of physiological differences among species, a 2013 study reported that the mouse models used extensively to study human inflammatory diseases (in sepsis, burns, infection, and trauma) have been misleading. The study found that mice differ greatly from humans in their responses to inflammatory conditions. Mice differed from humans in what genes were turned on and off and in the timing and duration of gene expression. The mouse models even differed from one another in their responses. The investigators concluded that “our study supports higher priority to focus on the more complex human conditions rather than relying on mouse models to study human inflammatory disease.” 47 The different genetic responses between mice and humans are likely responsible, at least in part, for the high drug failure rate. The authors stated that every one of almost 150 clinical trials that tested candidate agents’ ability to block inflammatory responses in critically ill patients failed.

Wide differences have also become apparent in the regulation of the same genes, a point that is readily seen when observing differences between human and mouse livers. 48 Consistent phenotypes (observable physical or biochemical characteristics) are rarely obtained by modification of the same gene, even among different strains of mice. 49 Gene regulation can substantially differ among species and may be as important as the presence or absence of a specific gene. Despite the high degree of genome conservation, there are critical differences in the order and function of genes among species. To use an analogy: as pianos have the same keys, humans and other animals share (largely) the same genes. Where we mostly differ is in the way the genes or keys are expressed. For example, if we play the keys in a certain order, we hear Chopin; in a different order, we hear Ray Charles; and in yet a different order, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis. In other words, the same keys or genes are expressed, but their different orders result in markedly different outcomes.

Recognizing the inherent genetic differences among species as a barrier to translation, researches have expressed considerable enthusiasm for genetically modified (GM) animals, including transgenic mice models, wherein human genes are inserted into the mouse genome. However, if a human gene is expressed in mice, it will likely function differently from the way it functions in humans, being affected by physiological mechanisms that are unique in mice. For example, a crucial protein that controls blood sugar in humans is missing in mice. 50 When the human gene that makes this protein was expressed in genetically altered mice, it had the opposite effect from that in humans: it caused loss of blood sugar control in mice. Use of GM mice has failed to successfully model human diseases and to translate into clinical benefit across many disease categories. 51 Perhaps the primary reason why GM animals are unlikely to be much more successful than other animal models in translational medicine is the fact that the “humanized” or altered genes are still in nonhuman animals.

In many instances, nonhuman primates (NHPs) are used instead of mice or other animals, with the expectation that NHPs will better mimic human results. However, there have been sufficient failures in translation to undermine this optimism. For example, NHP models have failed to reproduce key features of Parkinson’s disease, both in function and in pathology. 52 Several therapies that appeared promising in both NHPs and rat models of Parkinson’s disease showed disappointing results in humans. 53 The campaign to prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in millions of women to prevent cardiovascular disease was based in large part on experiments on NHPs. HRT is now known to increase the risk of these diseases in women. 54

HIV/AIDS vaccine research using NHPs represents one of the most notable failures in animal experimentation translation. Immense resources and decades of time have been devoted to creating NHP (including chimpanzee) models of HIV. Yet all of about 90 HIV vaccines that succeeded in animals failed in humans. 55 After HIV vaccine gp120 failed in clinical trials, despite positive outcomes in chimpanzees, a BMJ article commented that important differences between NHPs and humans with HIV misled researchers, taking them down unproductive experimental paths. 56 Gp120 failed to neutralize HIV grown and tested in cell culture. However, because the serum protected chimpanzees from HIV infection, two Phase 3 clinical trials were undertaken 57 —a clear example of how expectations that NHP data are more predictive than data from other (in this case, cell culture) testing methods are unproductive and harmful. Despite the repeated failures, NHPs (though not chimpanzees or other great apes) remain widely used for HIV research.

The implicit assumption that NHP (and indeed any animal) data are reliable has also led to significant and unjustifiable human suffering. For example, clinical trial volunteers for gp120 were placed at unnecessary risk of harm because of unfounded confidence in NHP experiments. Two landmark studies involving thousands of menopausal women being treated with HRT were terminated early because of increased stroke and breast cancer risk. 58 In 2003, Elan Pharmaceuticals was forced to prematurely terminate a Phase 2 clinical trial when an investigational AD vaccine was found to cause brain swelling in human subjects. No significant adverse effects were detected in GM mice or NHPs. 59

In another example of human suffering resulting from animal experimentation, six human volunteers were injected with an immunomodulatory drug, TGN 1412, in 2006. 60 Within minutes of receiving the experimental drug, all volunteers suffered a severe adverse reaction resulting from a life-threatening cytokine storm that led to catastrophic systemic organ failure. The compound was designed to dampen the immune system, but it had the opposite effect in humans. Prior to this first human trial, TGN 1412 was tested in mice, rabbits, rats, and NHPs with no ill effects. NHPs also underwent repeat-dose toxicity studies and were given 500 times the human dose for at least four consecutive weeks. 61 None of the NHPs manifested the ill effects that humans showed almost immediately after receiving minute amounts of the test drug. Cynomolgus and rhesus monkeys were specifically chosen because their CD28 receptors demonstrated similar affinity to TGN 1412 as human CD28 receptors. Based on such data as these, it was confidently concluded that results obtained from these NHPs would most reliably predict drug responses in humans—a conclusion that proved devastatingly wrong.

As exemplified by the study of HIV/AIDS, TGN 1412, and other experiences, 62 experiments with NHPs are not necessarily any more predictive of human responses than experiments with other animals. The repeated failures in translation from studies with NHPs belie arguments favoring use of any nonhuman species to study human physiology and diseases and to test potential treatments. If experimentation using chimpanzees and other NHPs, our closest genetic cousins, are unreliable, how can we expect research using other animals to be reliable? The bottom line is that animal experiments, no matter the species used or the type of disease research undertaken, are highly unreliable—and they have too little predictive value to justify the resultant risks of harms for humans, for reasons I now explain.

The Collective Harms That Result from Misleading Animal Experiments

As medical research has explored the complexities and subtle nuances of biological systems, problems have arisen because the differences among species along these subtler biological dimensions far outweigh the similarities , as a growing body of evidence attests. These profoundly important—and often undetected—differences are likely one of the main reasons human clinical trials fail. 63

“Appreciation of differences” and “caution” about extrapolating results from animals to humans are now almost universally recommended. But, in practice, how does one take into account differences in drug metabolism, genetics, expression of diseases, anatomy, influences of laboratory environments, and species- and strain-specific physiologic mechanisms—and, in view of these differences, discern what is applicable to humans and what is not? If we cannot determine which physiological mechanisms in which species and strains of species are applicable to humans (even setting aside the complicating factors of different caging systems and types of flooring), the usefulness of the experiments must be questioned.

It has been argued that some information obtained from animal experiments is better than no information. 64 This thesis neglects how misleading information can be worse than no information from animal tests. The use of nonpredictive animal experiments can cause human suffering in at least two ways: (1) by producing misleading safety and efficacy data and (2) by causing potential abandonment of useful medical treatments and misdirecting resources away from more effective testing methods.

Humans are harmed because of misleading animal testing results. Imprecise results from animal experiments may result in clinical trials of biologically faulty or even harmful substances, thereby exposing patients to unnecessary risk and wasting scarce research resources. 65 Animal toxicity studies are poor predictors of toxic effects of drugs in humans. 66 As seen in some of the preceding examples (in particular, stroke, HRT, and TGN1412), humans have been significantly harmed because investigators were misled by the safety and efficacy profile of a new drug based on animal experiments. 67 Clinical trial volunteers are thus provided with raised hopes and a false sense of security because of a misguided confidence in efficacy and safety testing using animals.

An equal if indirect source of human suffering is the opportunity cost of abandoning promising drugs because of misleading animal tests. 68 As candidate drugs generally proceed down the development pipeline and to human testing based largely on successful results in animals 69 (i.e., positive efficacy and negative adverse effects), drugs are sometimes not further developed due to unsuccessful results in animals (i.e., negative efficacy and/or positive adverse effects). Because much pharmaceutical company preclinical data are proprietary and thus publicly unavailable, it is difficult to know the number of missed opportunities due to misleading animal experiments. However, of every 5,000–10,000 potential drugs investigated, only about 5 proceed to Phase 1 clinical trials. 70 Potential therapeutics may be abandoned because of results in animal tests that do not apply to humans. 71 Treatments that fail to work or show some adverse effect in animals because of species-specific influences may be abandoned in preclinical testing even if they may have proved effective and safe in humans if allowed to continue through the drug development pipeline.

An editorial in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery describes cases involving two drugs in which animal test results from species-specific influences could have derailed their development. In particular, it describes how tamoxifen, one of the most effective drugs for certain types of breast cancer, “would most certainly have been withdrawn from the pipeline” if its propensity to cause liver tumor in rats had been discovered in preclinical testing rather than after the drug had been on the market for years. 72 Gleevec provides another example of effective drugs that could have been abandoned based on misleading animal tests: this drug, which is used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), showed serious adverse effects in at least five species tested, including severe liver damage in dogs. However, liver toxicity was not detected in human cell assays, and clinical trials proceeded, which confirmed the absence of significant liver toxicity in humans. 73 Fortunately for CML patients, Gleevec is a success story of predictive human-based testing. Many useful drugs that have safely been used by humans for decades, such as aspirin and penicillin, may not have been available today if the current animal testing regulatory requirements were in practice during their development. 74

A further example of near-missed opportunities is provided by experiments on animals that delayed the acceptance of cyclosporine, a drug widely and successfully used to treat autoimmune disorders and prevent organ transplant rejection. 75 Its immunosuppressive effects differed so markedly among species that researchers judged that the animal results limited any direct inferences that could be made to humans. Providing further examples, PharmaInformatic released a report describing how several blockbuster drugs, including aripiprazole (Abilify) and esomeprazole (Nexium), showed low oral bioavailability in animals. They would likely not be available on the market today if animal tests were solely relied on. Understanding the implications of its findings for drug development in general, PharmaInformatic asked, “Which other blockbuster drugs would be on the market today, if animal trials would have not been used to preselect compounds and drug-candidates for further development?” 76 These near-missed opportunities and the overall 96 percent failure rate in clinical drug testing strongly suggest the unsoundness of animal testing as a precondition of human clinical trials and provide powerful evidence for the need for a new, human-based paradigm in medical research and drug development.

In addition to potentially causing abandonment of useful treatments, use of an invalid animal disease model can lead researchers and the industry in the wrong research direction, wasting time and significant investment. 77 Repeatedly, researchers have been lured down the wrong line of investigation because of information gleaned from animal experiments that later proved to be inaccurate, irrelevant, or discordant with human biology. Some claim that we do not know which benefits animal experiments, particularly in basic research, may provide down the road. Yet human lives remain in the balance, waiting for effective therapies. Funding must be strategically invested in the research areas that offer the most promise.

The opportunity costs of continuing to fund unreliable animal tests may impede development of more accurate testing methods. Human organs grown in the lab, human organs on a chip, cognitive computing technologies, 3D printing of human living tissues, and the Human Toxome Project are examples of new human-based technologies that are garnering widespread enthusiasm. The benefit of using these testing methods in the preclinical setting over animal experiments is that they are based on human biology. Thus their use eliminates much of the guesswork required when attempting to extrapolate physiological data from other species to humans. Additionally, these tests offer whole-systems biology, in contrast to traditional in vitro techniques. Although they are gaining momentum, these human-based tests are still in their relative infancy, and funding must be prioritized for their further development. The recent advancements made in the development of more predictive, human-based systems and biological approaches in chemical toxicological testing are an example of how newer and improved tests have been developed because of a shift in prioritization. 78 Apart from toxicology, though, financial investment in the development of human-based technologies generally falls far short of investment in animal experimentation. 79

The unreliability of applying animal experimental results to human biology and diseases is increasingly recognized. Animals are in many respects biologically and psychologically similar to humans, perhaps most notably in the shared characteristics of pain, fear, and suffering. 80 In contrast, evidence demonstrates that critically important physiological and genetic differences between humans and other animals can invalidate the use of animals to study human diseases, treatments, pharmaceuticals, and the like. In significant measure, animal models specifically, and animal experimentation generally, are inadequate bases for predicting clinical outcomes in human beings in the great bulk of biomedical science. As a result, humans can be subject to significant and avoidable harm.

The data showing the unreliability of animal experimentation and the resultant harms to humans (and nonhumans) undermine long-standing claims that animal experimentation is necessary to enhance human health and therefore ethically justified. Rather, they demonstrate that animal experimentation poses significant costs and harms to human beings. It is possible—as I have argued elsewhere—that animal research is more costly and harmful, on the whole, than it is beneficial to human health. 81 When considering the ethical justifiability of animal experiments, we should ask if it is ethically acceptable to deprive humans of resources, opportunity, hope, and even their lives by seeking answers in what may be the wrong place. In my view, it would be better to direct resources away from animal experimentation and into developing more accurate, human-based technologies.

Aysha Akhtar , M.D., M.P.H., is a neurologist and preventive medicine specialist and Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Oxford, United Kingdom.

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Animal Rights Essay

Posted by David S. Wills | Jan 20, 2023 | Model Essays | 0

In the IELTS writing exam, you could be asked to write an essay about animals. Most likely, your question would relate to animal rights . This might seem challenging for some people, so I have written this article to help you understand it better.

Animal Rights and IELTS

For IELTS writing, you often have to discuss ethical issues. Thus, for the topic of animals, you would most likely have to write about animal rights. This could include:

• whether it is ethical to keep animals in a zoo
• discussing animal experimentation
• the ethics of eating meat
• whether humans should keep pets

Because IELTS requires no specialist knowledge, you would probably not have anything more specific than this to discuss. For example, you wouldn’t be asked about the ethics of purebred pet ownership because most people don’t know much about it. You would also not be given anything that is extremely controversial.

Therefore, the most common animal topics will be quite general and relate to animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay – Experimentation

Here is the question that we will examine today:

Some people argue that all experimentation on animals is bad and should be outlawed. However, others believe that important scientific discoveries can be made from animal experiments. Can experimentation on animals be justified? Are there any alternatives?

Note that there are many variants upon this topic. I have seen this same idea with “ Discuss both views ” and “ To what extent do you agree/disagree ” question types.

This one, of course, is a two-part question . Therefore, don’t waste too much time reading the long part above the questions. Regardless of what that says, your task is to:

• Say whether or not experiments on animals can be justified.
• Say whether there are alternatives to this practice.

Be aware that your answer to the first question cannot negate having to answer the second. Whether you say that animal testing can or can’t be justified, you still have to say whether there are alternatives.

Language for an Animal Rights Essay

If you need to write an essay on animal rights, you need to know some appropriate language. Again, you do not need to be an expert, but you should have enough of a grasp of English to say something intelligent about the topic.

You may have noticed that I’ve used these expressions in this article:

• Animal experimentation
• Experiments on animals
• Animal testing

These all mean the same thing but it can be useful to employ different ways to do that, so that you don’t just repeat yourself.

Of course, what you say will also depend hugely on your position and your ideas. If you think that animal experimentation is wrong, then you’ll probably incorporate some rather negative language, such as:

• Impossible to justify

On the other hand, if you support animal testing, you might say something more positive:

It is also good to know some specific language related to the topic:

• Medical testing
• Subjected to

You can learn more language by reading articles on this topic. Try searching Google for “animal rights” or “animal testing.” You’ll find lots of articles. Just make sure that it is written by a native speaker or a professional writer. Also, be aware that with a contentious topic there will probably be a lot of passionate language and maybe even some misinformation.

Planning your Answer

First of all, you need to figure out what your position is in regards the question(s). Then, you need to think about how to explain your position in a straightforward way.

Here, we had two questions. Both of them are yes/no questions but of course you need to develop those ideas with explanations. Think of your answer as “Yes because…” or “No because…” This will help you to think of reasons that you can then incorporate into your answers.

Also, be aware that two-part questions are really easy to structure! You can just devote one body paragraph to each question:

My position is that animal experimentation cannot be justified, so I will explain that in my first body paragraph. I will start with the main argument in defence of animal testing, then refute it comprehensively.

For the next question, I will state that I don’t really know whether or not there are any alternatives. Thus, my structure will be:

Sample Band 9 Answer

Over the past few decades, animal testing has been fiercely debated due to the ethical problems inherent in this area of science. This essay will explain why it cannot be justified and that alternatives need to be sought.

The people who believe that animal testing is necessary tend to say that there are serious benefits to humanity, such as testing medicines before using them on human beings. They believe that this will help to figure out the cures to many serious illnesses, which will make the world a better place for humans. However, this is wrong for several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that animal testing is not as helpful in developing medicines as people think. Medicines that work on animals do not always work on humans, and vice versa. As such, these trials are not just unnecessary but also profoundly unhelpful. For example, if scientists give a mouse diabetes and then try various drugs to cure the problem, they may find that there are twelve drugs that do not work on the mouse. However, maybe one of those drugs would have worked on a human. As such, animal testing would have caused more problems than it solved.

Part of the reason for animal testing is that there are not many alternatives. Whilst it is obviously cruel and pointless to subject animals to experiments, most people would agree that it is worse to do this to human beings. However, there needs to be some sort of procedure by which testing can move from theoretical to human trials without the need for the evils of animal testing. What this process would be remains to be seen, but it is essential for any humane society.

In conclusion, people may argue that there are benefits that come from experimenting on animals, but in fact there is no good reason to continue doing this. Scientists need to immediately seek an alternative and end this barbaric and pointless practice. 

Notes on the Answer

This was a good answer because it gave fully developed explanations and used language accurately. Here are some words and phrases from the answer:

• fiercely debated
• ethical problems
• profoundly unhelpful
• cruel and pointless
• theoretical
• humane society

Paragraph two was also quite interesting. I felt that the most convincing way to make my point was to show conventional logic and then comprehensively debunk it. To do so, I gave a clear example and demonstrated through a simple explanation of just why animal testing is so useless.

About The Author

David S. Wills

David S. Wills is the author of Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult' and the founder/editor of Beatdom literary journal. He lives and works in rural Cambodia and loves to travel. He has worked as an IELTS tutor since 2010, has completed both TEFL and CELTA courses, and has a certificate from Cambridge for Teaching Writing. David has worked in many different countries, and for several years designed a writing course for the University of Worcester. In 2018, he wrote the popular IELTS handbook, Grammar for IELTS Writing and he has since written two other books about IELTS. His other IELTS website is called IELTS Teaching.

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Animal Rights: Definition, Issues, and Examples

Animal rights advocates believe that non-human animals should be free to live as they wish, without being used, exploited, or otherwise interfered with by humans.

T he idea of giving rights to animals has long been contentious, but a deeper look into the reasoning behind the philosophy reveals ideas that aren’t all that radical. Animal rights advocates want to distinguish animals from inanimate objects, as they are so often considered by exploitative industries and the law.

The animal rights movement strives to make the public aware of the fact that animals are sensitive, emotional , and intelligent beings who deserve dignity and respect. But first, it’s important to understand what the term "animal rights" really means.

What are animal rights?

Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice . In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect certain freedoms, such as the right to expression, freedom from torture, and access to democracy. Of course, these choices are constrained depending on social locations like race, class, and gender, but generally speaking, human rights safeguard the basic tenets of what makes human lives worth living. Animal rights aim to do something similar, only for non-human animals.

Animal rights come into direct opposition with animal exploitation, which includes animals used by humans for a variety of reasons, be it for food , as experimental objects, or even pets. Animal rights can also be violated when it comes to human destruction of animal habitats . This negatively impacts the ability of animals to lead full lives of their choosing.

Do animals have rights?

Very few countries have enshrined animal rights into law. However, the US and the UK do have some basic protections and guidelines for how animals can be treated.

The UK Sentience Bill

In 2021, the United Kingdom's House of Commons introduced the Animal Sentience Bill . If passed, this bill would enshrine into law that animals are, in fact, sentient beings, and they deserve humane treatment at the hands of humans. While this law would not afford animals full autonomy, it would be a watershed in the movement to protect animals—officially recognizing their capacity to feel and to suffer, and distinguishing them from inanimate objects.

The US Animal Welfare Act

In 1966, the United States passed the Animal Welfare Act . While it is the biggest federal legislation addressing the treatment of animals to date, its scope is fairly narrow—the law excludes many species, including farmed animals , from its protections. The law does establish some basic guidelines for the sale, transport, and handling of dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, and hamsters. It also protects the psychological welfare of animals who are used in lab experiments, and prohibits the violent practices of dogfighting and cockfighting. Again, this law does not recognize the rights and autonomy of animals—or even their ability to feel pain and suffer—but it does afford non-human animals some basic welfare protections .

What are some examples of animal rights?

While few laws currently exist in the UK or US that recognize or protect animals' rights to enjoy lives free from human interference, the following is a list of examples of animal rights that could one day be enacted:

• Animals may not be used for food.
• Animals may not be hunted.
• The habitats of animals must be protected to allow them to live according to their choosing.
• Animals may not be bred.

What's the difference between animal welfare and animal rights?

Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason, and that animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people. Animal welfare , on the other hand, is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.

Do animals need rights? Pros and cons

The idea of giving animals rights tends to be contentious, given how embedded animal products are within societies such as the United States. Some people, including animal activists, believe in an all-or-nothing approach, where animal rights must be legally enshrined and animals totally liberated from all exploitation. On the other end of the spectrum are people whose livelihoods depend upon animal-based industries. Below are some arguments both in favor of and opposing animal rights.

Arguments in favor of animal rights

Should the rights of animals be recognized, animal exploitative industries would disappear, as would the host of environmental problems they cause, including water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation.

Halting the widespread use of animals would also eliminate the systematic cruelty and denial of choice that animal industries perpetuate. The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable , to say the least. Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways, including castrations, dehorning, and cutting off various body parts, usually without the use of anesthetic.

“ Many species never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse.

As their name suggests, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pack vast numbers of animals in cramped conditions, often forcing animals to perpetually stand in their own waste. Many species—including chickens, cows, and pigs—never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse. Recognizing animal rights would necessitate stopping this mistreatment for good.

Arguments against animal rights

Most arguments against animal rights can be traced back to money, because animal exploitation is big business. Factory farming for animal products is a multi-billion-dollar industry. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, posted $9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2020 alone.

A lesser-known, yet also massive, industry is that which supplies animals for laboratories. The US market for lab rats (who are far less popular than mice for experiments) was valued at over $412 million in 2016. Big industrial producers of animals and animal products have enough political clout to influence legislation—including passing laws making it illegal to document farm conditions—and to benefit from government subsidies.

Many people depend upon animal exploitation for work. On factory farms, relatively small numbers of people can manage vast herds or flocks of animals, thanks to mechanization and other industrial farming techniques. Unfortunately, jobs in industrial meatpacking facilities are also known to be some of the most dangerous in the US. Smaller farmers coming from multi-generational farming families more directly depend upon using animals to make a living and tend to follow welfare standards more judiciously. However, smaller farms have been decreasing in number, due to the proliferation of factory farms against which they often cannot compete.

Although people may lose money or jobs in the transition to animal alternatives, new jobs can be created in the alternative protein sector and other plant-based industries.

When did the animal rights movement begin in the US?

The modern day animal rights movement in the United States includes thousands of individuals and a multitude of groups who advocate for animals in a variety of ways—from lobbying legislators to support animal rights laws, to rescuing animals from situations of abuse and neglect. While individuals throughout history have believed in and fought for animal rights, we can trace back the modern, US-based animal rights movement to the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. The group's founder, Henry Burgh , believed that animals are "entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law." The organization worked with the New York City government to pass and enforce anti-cruelty laws that prevented the abuse of carthorses and provided care for injured horses. Since then, the ASPCA has expanded its advocacy across different non-human animal species—including farmed animals—and many more animal protection groups have sprung up, both locally and nationwide. Currently, there are over 40,000 non-profit organizations identified as animal groups in the US.

Why are animal rights important?

Animal rights are important because they represent a set of beliefs that counteract inaccurate yet long-held assumptions that animals are nothing more than mindless machines—beliefs popularized by western philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century. The perception of animals as being unthinking, unfeeling beings justified using them for human desires, resulting in today’s world where farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild, and the majority of these farmed animals are forced to endure harsh conditions on factory farms.

“ Farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild.

But the science is increasingly clear: The animals we eat ( pigs, chickens, cows ), the animals we use in laboratories ( mice and rats ), the animals who provide us with clothing , and those whose backs we ride upon have all been found to possess more cognitive complexity, emotions, and overall sophistication than has long been believed. This sophistication renders animals more susceptible not only to physical pain but also to the psychological impacts caused by the habitual denial of choice. Awareness of their own subjugation forms sufficient reasoning to rethink the ways animals are treated in western societies.

The consequences of animal rights

Currently, laws in the US and UK are geared toward shielding animals from cruelty, not giving them the same freedom of choice that humans have. (Even these laws are sorely lacking, as they fail to protect livestock and laboratory animals.) However, the animal rights movement can still have real-world consequences. Calls for animal liberation from places like factory farms can raise public awareness of the poor living conditions and welfare violations these facilities perpetuate, sometimes resulting in stronger protections, higher welfare standards , and decreasing consumer demand. Each of these outcomes carries economic consequences for producers, as typically it is more expensive for factory farms to provide better living conditions such as more space, or using fewer growth hormones which can result in lower production yields.

Of course, should the animal rights movement achieve its goals , society would look much different than it does today. If people consume more alternative sources of protein, such as plant-based or lab-grown meat, the global environment would be far less impacted. Clothing would be made without leather or other animal products; alternative sources, such as pineapple leather created from waste products from the pineapple industry, could replace toxic tanneries. The fur industry is being increasingly shunned, with fashion labels rejecting fur in favor of faux materials. Ocean ecosystems would be able to recover, replenishing fish populations and seafloor habitats. Today these are razed by bottom trawling fishing, resulting in the clear-cutting of corals that can be thousands of years old .

How you can advocate for animals

A world in which animals are free from human exploitation still seems far off, but we can make choices that create a kinder world for animals, every day. We can start by leaving animals off our plate in favor of plant-based alternatives—a choice that recognizes animals as the sentient beings that they are, and not products for consumption.

When we come together, we can also fight for better protections for animals in the US and around the world. There's a robust movement to hold corporations accountability and end the cruelty of factory farming—an industry which causes immense amount of suffering for billions of animals. If you want to help end this suffering and spread compassion for animals, join our community of online animal activists and take action .

More like this

What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

Though critics argue that advocating for animal welfare only cements animals’ exploitation in laboratories, on farms, and in other industrial situations, strengthening welfare standards makes these animals' lives more bearable.

The Ethical Case for Welfare Reform

Industry welfare commitments are good for animals. Here’s why.

Animal Testing: Should Animal Testing Be Allowed? — Argumentative Essay

Animal testing: introduction, animal testing: debatable questions, animal testing: conclusion.

Animal testing denotes the use of animals in medical experiments to unveil the potency, safety, toxicity, and viability of developed drugs. Concurrently, the phenomenon also applies to other biological experiments, which utilize animals as specimens. The method incorporates the administration of pharmaceutical compounds into biological systems (test animals).

This usually occurs for scientific purposes and medical developments. The process is debatable and has been disputed by animal activists, religious groups, and ethical communities who believe that the trend is immoral and inappropriate since animals cannot be compared with human beings (Panza & Potthast, 2010).

Animal testing usually involve vertebrates like rodents, cats, dogs, birds, and Guinea pigs among others. Since this is a disputable phenomenon, where one can argue for or against the act, this paper supports the aspects of animal testing with bountiful reasons based on its viability in investigating pharmacological compounds. Without animal testing, numerous drugs, which currently help the humankind, could have missed.

Since human beings cannot commence crude pharmaceutical investigations as test specimens, using test animals is significant in this context. It is advisable to execute scientific investigations elsewhere before introducing them into human beings. It is crucial to agree that animal testing might be unethical phenomenon as argued by some groups; nonetheless, it should continue following its merits and contributions to the humankind in the realms of drug investigations and scientific discoveries.

With regard to animal testing, debatable questions emerge. In this paper, “Should animal testing be abandoned due to ethical claims surrounding it?” forms the debated question. This question tries to unveil whether it is viable for biologists and medical scientists to cease from using animals for experimental investigations.

Despite the conventional use of these animals in numerous scientific experiments, it is still debatable on their viability and potency. Arguably, the animal testing phenomenon should continue with regard to scientific investigations.

The need for efficacy, safety, novelty, and certainty in the realms of drug-use require thorough investigative experiments, which can only materialize when test animals are incorporated. Firstly, some animal have systems that resemble those of human beings; thus, the ability to use such animals give a broader chance of executing an elaborate experimental investigation.

Using animals as representative of humans is a critical phenomenon when scrutinized critically. There are numerous individuals who have disputed this claim as stated in the research question. The desire to continue with the animal testing phenomenon has infuriated numerous activists who are against it (Panza & Potthast, 2010).

Nonetheless, it is evident and appropriate that this phenomenon should continue for further discoveries to be realized. It is questionable how further medical research will occur and how this will materialize without the use of test animals. This is an impossible phenomenon, which demands those who are arguing against animal testing to reconsider their stands.

Another issue is that human beings cannot be used as experimental animals. The drugs administered into humans must be of some quality, minimized toxicity, viable to use, potent, safe, and effective. This means that they have been investigated and approved by the concerned bodies after scientific investigations. If animal testing will be abandoned, no effective experimentation will occur on biological vessels.

Evidently, invitro (using experimental tubes) experimentations are slow and incomprehensive. This means that scientific investigations will delay and sometimes results might not occur. It is vital to consider that animal testing has helped significantly since its inception several decades ago. It has remained a viable, trusted, and considerable experimental design for pharmaceutical products and other scientific investigations.

Harrison & Hester (2006), which identifies alternative of animal testing, agrees that attaining an alternative of this trend is daunting and minimally achievable. Scientific considerations support this trend since there are limited alternatives to replace the method comprehensively (Harrison & Hester, 2006).

Those who are against animal testing claim that animals are not human beings and equating the two is inconsiderable. Evidently, animal are not exact copies of humans. There are numerous differences noticeable amidst the two factions. Additionally, they argue that what works best in a guinea pig (an experimental animal), might not exactly perform in humans.

The two factions (humans and test animals) are different hence the assumption that they can emulate each other is misled. Notably, this argument is understandable; however, as the situation stands, it is still appropriate to conduct animal testing to help in research investigations. Humans can hardly be used for crude or undeveloped researches as the ones done with test animals. This means that animal testing is still the best option.

According to Schmidt (2001), which discusses the aspects of animal testing, recognizes that it is important to infer that what is inconsumable for test animals is similarly consumable for humans. It is possible to note the adverse effects of drugs with animals, make appropriate changes in the composition of the tested drug, and later emerge with effective, safe, and potent compound worth human utilization.

Watson (2009), which describes the ethical issues related to animal testing, argues that some ethical claims behind the animal testing are baseless when compared to human lives saved daily due to animal testing executed to investigate proper and effective drugs. A mere claim that it is immoral to inject or administer unworthy compounds into an innocent animal while doing research is superfluous. This simply means that those who are against animal testing hardly want researches to be done using animals.

This is good and considerable; however, these very people hardly provide viable alternatives that can work better compared to the conventional animal testing provisions. Besides, they are also among those who gain from the findings and results achieved from such investigations. Evidently, almost all drugs currently used in the world at one point passed through animal testing to unveil their viability, safety, efficacy, toxicity levels, and other viable provisions demanded in this context.

Concurrently, it is inappropriate to abandon animal testing as claimed by the activists. The current discoveries on genetics, reproduction, developmental biology, and study of behaviors among others could have not materialized minus animal testing.

Additionally, there are other viable provisions that characterize the phenomenon besides the known pharmaceutical investigations which usually occur using test animals as stipulated before. In these mentioned fields, there are still considerable knowledge gaps that will necessitate further application of animal testing in order to unveil additional information.

This phenomenon can hardly occur minus animal testing since there will be no specimens for further research. The ethical claims fronted by the mentioned activists should cease from hindering further investigations (Watson, 2009). It is evident that discoveries made from animal testing are numerous and helpful to the human race as indicated earlier. The need for more investigations and application of animal testing will continue to exist following its viability, applicability, and reliability in the aspects of research.

The viewpoint that animals equally have moral rights is evident; however, it is disputable in this context since it acts as a hindrance to lucrative investigations and discoveries that are helpful to the humankind. Hayhurst (2000), which debates on animal rights, denotes that individuals who perceive animal as having rights are equally accurate in their opinions; nonetheless, they should also consider the merits of animal testing to their lives and beyond.

This relates to the ethical arguments posted with regard to this topic. It forms the center of argument from various people. It is crucial to denote that animal testing has numerous provisions worth noting in varying contexts. This relates to its viability and potency in unveiling the less investigated claims with regard to life. According to various sources, some arguments regarding the aspects of animal testing are invalid and misleading (Hayhurst, 2000). They simply emerge from undue compassion for animals.

This contributes to why this paper agrees with the continuity of animal testing. Precisely, its merits surpass its baseless flaws numerous times. It is recommendable to scrutinize these arguments before they derail the realities that encompass a given matter. It is crucial to consider such provisions following their viability in this context.

Additionally, those who argue against animal testing claim that such animals lack the capacity to express themselves hence can hardly show their pain, dissatisfaction, and suffering.

This is a critical claim; however, it is not enough to support the ban against animal testing. Conversely, scientists, medics, and biologists who use such animals apply moral aspects to their undertakings; hence, will barely intend to harm such experimental animals. Since such ethical observations are carried out within the mentioned experimental testing, it is considerable to continue with the animal testing phenomenon. Adjusting the conditions of these tests might equally help in upholding the ethical demands.

Another argument is that animal testing simplifies and speeds the experimental designs meant to make discoveries. This could have not been achievable minus such experimental trends. Testing developed research products on animals elicit the desired results with promptness. It is daunting and time consuming to develop therapeutic and diagnostic compounds from human beings. This relates to the aspects of delay claimed earlier.

Scientists will not be able to attain their demands in time. This might discourage them from continuing with investigations. Since the use of animal testing provides instant results, its application is widespread, applicable, and viable in numerous contexts. The aspects of safety indicated earlier in these claims equally contribute to the applicability of animal testing. It is improper to execute unsafe experiments or unverified drugs on humans.

The repercussions might be devastating than when it was applied on test animals (Schmidt, 2001). For example, developments and investigations on HIV drugs cannot occur on humans at their initial stages. It is advisable to develop them through animal testing before rendering them usable by humans. It is possible to adjust the composition of the given compound to unveil its viable concentrations. Emerging with instant results supports the application of animal testing and contributes massively in this context.

Animal testing is a helpful phenomenon in biological, medical, and other scientific investigations demanding its incorporation. The phenomenon is helpful, viable, and should be embraced despite the opposing opinions. Animal testing helps in developing effective, safe, viable, qualitative, and less toxic drugs. Following the merits of animal testing, its application and advancements should continue while observing ethical concerns.

Harrison, R. & Hester, R. (2006). Alternatives to Animal Testing . Ohio, OH: Cengage Learning.

Hayhurst, C. (2000). Animal testing: The animal rights debate . New York, NY: Rosen Pub. Group.

Panza, C. & Potthast, A. (2010). Ethics For Dummies . Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.

Schmidt, A. (2001). Animal testing in infectiology . Basel: Karger.

Watson, S. (2009). Animal testing: Issues and ethics . New York, NY: Rosen Pub.

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IvyPanda. (2018, November 6). Animal Testing: Should Animal Testing Be Allowed? — Argumentative Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/animal-testing-argumentative-essay/

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Animal Rights Essay

This IELTS  animal rights essay  discusses the exploitation of animals by humans.

People who believe in animal rights think that they should not be treated cruelly, for example in experiments or for sport.

'To exploit' means to benefit from something in an unfair way. Take a look at the question:

A growing number of people feel that animals should not be exploited by people and that they should have the same rights as humans, while others argue that humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Discussing 'Two Opinions'

Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans. Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this essay you are being given two opposing opinions to discuss.

This is the first opinion:

• Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans.

This is the second opinion:

• Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this type of essay, you must look at both sides. In other words you need to discuss the arguments FOR animal rights and AGAINST .

You must also ensure you give YOUR opinion.

Organising the Essay

One way to organize an essay like this is to consider both opinions, then give your opinion in a final paragraph ( see this example ) or dedicate a whole final paragraph to your opinion ( see this example ).

Another way to write an essay like this is to also make one of the 'for' or 'against' opinions your opinion as well.

Look at the model animal rights essay below. The second body paragraph discusses the first opinion, but the topic sentence makes it clear that this paragraph is also representing the writers opinion as well:

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny.

This now means that in two body paragraphs you have covered all three parts of the question from the animal rights essay:

1. First opinion 2. Second opinion 3. Your opinion

The advantage of doing it this way rather than having a separate paragraph is that you do not need to come up with new ideas for a new paragraph.

If you have a separate paragraph with your opinion you may find you cannot think of any new ideas or you may end up repeating the same things as in your previous paragraphs.

IELTS Writing Example

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Animal Rights Essay - Model Answer

Animals have always been used by humans in some form to satisfy their needs. However, while some people believe that animals should be treated in the same way humans are and have similar rights, others think that it is more important to use them as we desire for food and medical research. 

With regard to the exploitation of animals, people believe it is acceptable for several reasons. Firstly, they think that humans are the most important beings on the planet, and everything must be done to ensure human survival. If this means experimenting on animals so that we can fight and find cures for diseases, then this takes priority over animal suffering. Furthermore, it is believed by some that animals do not feel pain or loss as humans do, so if we have to kill animals for food or other uses, then this is morally acceptable.

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny. To begin, it has been shown on numerous occasions by secret filming in laboratories via animal rights groups that animals feel as much pain as humans do, and they suffer when they are kept in cages for long periods. In addition, a substantial amount of animal research is done for cosmetics, not to find cures for diseases, so this is unnecessary. Finally, it has also been proven that humans can get all the nutrients and vitamins that they need from green vegetables and fruit. Therefore, again, having to kill animals for food is not an adequate argument.

To sum up, although some people argue killing animals for research and food is ethical, I would argue there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this is not the case, and, therefore, steps must be taken to improve the rights of animals.

(Words 290) 

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