No animal understands what experimentation is. Therefore, how does one decide whether it is ethical to conduct experiments on them, experiments that involve blatant cruelty and assault?
It must be remembered that those people who voice their objections to using animals in experimentation fall under two broad categories: animal welfare activists, and animal rights activists. While those who belong to animal welfare groups do agree that animal experimentation must carry on, but that they must be minimized, so that the pain and suffering of the poor creatures is also minimized, those that belong to the animal rights group are more radical with their opinions. These people have often stated that animals too have their rights, in much the same way as human beings do, and that animals must therefore never be used for the purposes of experimentation, as this is extremely cruel, unkind, brutal and unethical. (Bridgstock, 69)
Going back in time, it is true that animals have been used for experiments since time immemorial, although it was comparatively rare before the nineteenth century. One of the earliest records of animals used for experiments was found to be from ancient Rome, when the renowned court physician, 129 to 210 CE Erasistratus supposedly used a pig to show the severance of the different nerves to his audience by cutting them on the hapless pig. In the late middle ages, anatomy was being interestingly investigated, with the help of animals, who were dissected to find out the working of the body. Some of the famous physicians of the time were William Harvey and Andreas Vesalius, who used various kinds of animals in their experiments on anatomy. Harvey was also known to have used deer in his experiments to find out about blood circulation, while Rene Descartes is known to have stated that animals are much like machines, because they do not experience pain at all! Amazingly, this was the view that persisted until the twentieth century: that an animal do not experience pain. It was Francois Magendie and Claude Bernard who made the foundation, during the nineteenth century, for the modern day animal experimentation. (Kuhse; Singer, 399)
However, these two scientists conducted their experiments on fully conscious animals which had been restrained, and they were condemned later for their cruelty and unethical treatment of animals. These protests culminated in the...
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