Animal Testing
The Use of Animals in Drug Testing
Animal testing extracts strong opinions from both those for and those against the practice. There are two main reasons why animals are used in scientific experimentation for drug testing. The first is to make sure the safety of new drugs and other pharmaceutical products. The second is to see how these drugs might be effective in humans (De Boer, 2009). The testing of drugs on animals is a very important process that is necessary in order to facilitate the research and development of new drugs for humans.
The testing of drugs on humans typically comes at the end of a long process of safety data collection. This may include testing the product in a test-tube and using a computer program to simulate what might happen to the drug inside the body and the testing of the drugs on animals. The policies on what safety data is required for a new product vary from country to country and also from drug to drug, but most drug authorities require all three types of data, animal, in vitro and computer generated (De Boer, 2009). This is what makes drug testing on animals so very important in the pharmaceutical industry.
References
Cami, Jordi. (1991). Perspectives and future on testing for abuse liability in humans. British Journal of Addiction. 86(12), p1529-1531.
De Boer, Bonita. (2009). HIV Drugs, Vaccines and Animal Testing. Retrieved March 19, 2010,
from Avert Web site: http://www.avert.org/hiv-animal-testing.htm
Greaves, Peter, Williams, Andrew and Eve, Malcolm. (2004). First dose of potential new medicines to humans: how animals help. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 3(3), p226-
Houdebine, L.-M. (2005). Use of Transgenic Animals to Improve Human Health and Animal
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Wanjek, Christopher. (2008). Why Lab Animals are Still Used. Retrieved March 19, 2010, from Live Science Web site: http://www.livescience.com/health/080212-bad-animal-testing.html
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Animal Testing Negatives of Animal Testing Outweigh Its Positives and Therefore Should Not be Allowed Many cures and treatments have been developed in the last three hundred years due to advances in medical technology. These developments are sometimes attributed partly to the fact that scientists and researchers have been able to use animals as "guinea pigs" for testing new medications or treatment methods before passing them to human volunteers. There is strong
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" [Peter Tatchell]. Thus it is clear that animal models provide unreliable and often contradictory results for pharmaceutical research experiments and also delay the development of vital drugs that could potentially save millions of humans. New Testing Methods Advancements in biotechnology have drastically impacted our understanding of diseases and the development of appropriate pharmacological interventions. 'Science-Based Toxicology' (SBT) enables us to study toxicity at the cellular level. There is definitive hope that
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