Free Argumentative Essay On Ethical Issues Associated With Animal Experiments

Is Animal Testing Ethical

Introduction
As of today, we have entered the third millennium and our spiritual as well as technological progress requires us to eliminate all the obstacles on our way to the civilized development. Although the majority of people consider themselves to be civilized individuals, very few of us pay attention to less developed ones, our younger brothers suffering from animal testing.
Have you ever wondered how many animals die annually all over the world due to the experienced carried out on them? Want it or not, but statistic data from various sources indicate that there are over 150 animals dying annually all over the world due to the experiments and tests on them? The majority of experiments, namely 65% of all tests conducted on animals are used in medical research for the purpose of testing drugs and new treatments. Other fundamental researches, including those in medical, military, and space fields, account for 16% of animal testing. 8% of the experimental animals die during toxicity tests carried out on them in the process of development and creation of cosmetics and other industrial compounds. In fact, 1% of all student experiments result in the severe injuries and traumas or even death of the animal. But do you believe this horrifying statistics to be a natural occurrence in the modern world?
I truly believe that it is morally wrong carry out tests on animals and torture them regardless of whether we speak of mice, cats, sheep or other animals. Therefore, the main point of this argumentative paper is to prove that such tests are not worth the efforts and explain why animal testing is unethical and immoral.

There has been much discussion over the ethical issues of animal experiments for the past decades. It is a common knowledge that every year, millions of our younger brothers suffer from painful experiments, which take away their lives. Believe it or not, but a great number of experimental animals are burned, scalded, poisoned, or subjected to electric discharges on a daily basis, while others simply starve to death due to the people's don't-care attitude. Moreover, the majority of people carrying out tests on animals, habituate them to drugs causing irreversible changes in the animals' bodies and brains.
Unfortunately "the morality of animal experimentation is rarely questioned by researchers, who generally choose to defend the practice dogmatically, rather than confront the obvious moral issues it raises" (Cohen, et al., 21). In fact, when animal experimenters speak about animal testing, there is always one discussion issue they tend to avoid. And this issue is ethical aspect of their testing experiments. For instance, you will never hear from them the word 'kill' or 'murder' with regard to laboratory animals as they tend to 'sacrifice' animals to save humans' lives. Animal experimenters may make mention of so-called 'distress' experienced by animals, but they would never admit animals' sufferings and anguishes.
As a result of such attitude, "in their annual reports to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), none of the researchers acknowledged that any animals had experienced unrelieved pain or distress". (Cohen, et al., 21)
Although the issue of ethical aspect of animal testing is frequently avoided by animal experimenters, there are many animal testing opponents in our modern society. According to the article "Experimenting on Animals" on the BBC website, "the level of suffering and the number of animals involved are both so high that the benefits to humanity don't provide moral justification".
The opponent of tests performance on animals, philosopher Tom Regan believes that animals are subjects of life, having indispensable moral rights. Therefore, he argues that their life is priceless and cannot be taken away by any other individual.
Philosopher Bernard Rollin asserts that people do not have the right to animals and therefore it is unacceptable to use them in for their own avaricious purposes, not benefiting the animals themselves.
Another opponent of tests performance on animals. philosopher Peter Singer, advocating the concept of utilitarianism, sees no justification for animals' sufferings especially when they are associated solely with sordid motives of humans.
The good news is that there are already a lot of people who realize the immorality and wickedness of such tests on animals and try to the best of their ability to prevent animals from suffering. For instance, governments of the Netherlands and New Zealand have banned the usage of monkeys in experiments leading to animals' sufferings and anguishes. Moreover, a number of medical schools in China, Japan and South Korea have put up tombstones in memory of the killed animals. The annual memorial service for the dead animals killed in health care providing institutions is held in Japan. It may sound surprising but goods production and economy in general are the root causes of tests carried out on animals. In fact, cruel and violent tests on animals continue to exist, primarily because the majority of consumers are commonly not familiar with this serious ethical issues regarding the process of production and animal testing, while the manufacturers do not communicate this information to their customers.
Another serious issue associated with animal testing and experiments carried out on animals is the fact that a lot of students from different schools are being forced to perform tests on animals. Taking into consideration the fact that animal testing is intrinsically unethical, forcing people to perform acts like these is even more immoral.

Conclusion

It is obvious that animals' sufferings and anguishes should no longer be viewed as a natural occurrence. The number of experimental animals do not in any way provide moral justification for cruel testing and experiments carried out on them. One should realize that an animal's life is priceless just as a human's one and therefore, no one is allowed to take it away or inflict suffering on it.
Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, one should agree that animal testing is unethical and immoral. As of today, a lot of replacements for the animal testing processes and innovative methods of testing have been already developed or are at the stage of elaboration and implementation.
Consequently," rapid replacement of animal experimentation with nonanimal and human-based methods should be considered as a scientific and ethical imperative. ("Problems Associated with Animal Experimentation")

Works Cited

Cohen, Murry J., Christopher Anderegg, Kathy Archibald, Jarrod Bailey, and Stephen R. Kaufman. A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation. New York: Medical Research Modernization Committee, 2006. Print.
"Experimenting on Animals." BBC News. BBC. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml>.
"Problems Associated with Animal Experimentation." The Council on Humane Giving. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.pcrm.org/>.