For at least twenty years, animal experimentation has been one of the burning issues all over the world. In the United States, scientists perform experiments on more than 20 million animals each year; however, animal rights activists claim it is 100 million per year (Rowan, Animal Experimentation). There are so many people around the world under the banner “say no to animal experimentation”. It is a common belief that through animal experimentation one can solve many existing problems. But, what is animal experimentation? Animal experimentation is the use of animals in biological, medical, and psychological studies (Rowan, Animal Experimentation). In the other words it is putting animals in pain, distress and even death for human benefits. Aren’t we ill-treating these animals by the name of animal experimentation? Are their results reliable? After this much development in technology, do we still need to rely on this type of experiments? Results of much research in this field and a huge choice of alternatives are pointing to the answer “animal experimentations are not reliable at all”.

We treat animals as if they are toys and do not want to respect their rights. As humans, we believe ourselves to be dominant to every thing in the world, which is why we use the animals to experiment on, to save our own life. Animals are being abused and killed for the benefit of humans. Since many religions take animals as something special, these experimentations are not only disrespectful to animals, they are also disrespectful to the humans who belong to those religions as well (Roberts).  There are also many types of technology used for all sorts of things, especially as each year passes, new technology develops rapidly. Instead of testing products on animals, why not use technology to test products on? Technology is now widely using for unnecessary things such as electronic tooth brushes, or other items such as that. Instead of wasting money and time on those things, why not spare the lives of these animals and make machinery to test products on, that will tell us if the product is useful or not.

 In the name of animal experimentation, we are mistreating animals by several means. Medical researchers use animals to get a better understanding of both human and animal anatomy. In labs, animal bodies are tested by opening their body when they are either dead (dissection) or alive (vivisection). Their tissues and even organs are transplanted and used for different experiments. Most of the times, animals that are used for this purpose are kept in isolated cages. These animals are also used to study the causes and effects of different diseases. Drugs, surgical techniques and other medical therapies are tested on them before it is used in animals. Scientists are also using them to test the safety of chemicals in food products and cosmetics. All of these experiments may help scientists and medical students to gather more knowledge about anatomy and physiology of humans and may help to fight against diseases by developing new medicines. However, as its name says “animal experimentation” is just an experiment, it may succeed or fail. Besides, if animal experiments fail to inform medical research, or if the quality of the experiment is too poor to provide sufficient information, the research will be conducted unnecessarily.

Moreover, animal testing results are not always consistent. Too much dependency in the type of animals used for the experimentation, and the fact that animals and humans differ in their biological settings, shows us that it has a serious negative effect in the reliability of animal experimentation. Due to their biological variations, naturally no animals can have human diseases, and these variations make the animal experimentations inapplicable (Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine). In the other words, human diseases may not occur in animals, and if it occurs it will be in a quite different mode. With all the common sense humans have, one can assume the unreliability of these types of experiments.

There are so many examples for the failure of animal experimentation because of the biological variations between humans and animals. The difference in the severity of AIDS in humans and animals is main among them. While monkeys, rabbits, and mice that are born with severe combined immunodeficiency can be infected with HIV, none of them develops human AIDS syndrome; moreover, more than one hundred chimpanzees infected with HIV, over a ten year period only a few become sick. (Cohen, A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation). In addition to that, many substances, which are poisonous to human, are not poisonous for animals. Strychnine, one of the deadliest poisons to humans, is harmless to monkeys, chickens, and guinea pigs. A dose of belladonna that would kill a person is harmless to rabbits and goats. Sheep can consume enormous quantities of arsenic, which is fatal to humans in small amounts. What we consider as poisonous mushrooms (Amanita Phalloides) are commonly eaten by rabbits. Hemlock is a deadly poison for humans, but is consumed without ill effect by mice, sheep, goats and horses. PCP, or "angel dust", which drives humans into frenzy, is used as a sedative for horses (Goldsmith). These means humans are conducting these experiments in an entirely different platform from humans, which proves the unreliability of animal experimentation.

However, the fact is like this, there are a few people who still believe that animal experimentation is a must for our scientific development. For those people, it is the only way to test new medicines and their side effects before testing it on humans. They are also arguing that only through vivisection, medical students or scientists can acquire sufficient knowledge about anatomy and physiology and make critical tests that help humans in future. According to them, xenotransplantation, another main technique of animal experimentation that performs test by transplanting tissues and organs to one body to another, can solve many human diseases. They are also arguing that through animal experimentation one can develop many new medications. In short, their point is that science cannot move further without animal experimentation. Yes, animal experimentation does reveal a lot of information to scientific world; however, many of the later researches proved the unreliability of these findings. Now it is the time to examine their arguments to verify the reliability of animal experimentation; let us begin from the main technique of animal experimentation, vivisection.

Vivisection is described as a practice of cutting opens the bodies of living animals to do medical or scientific test on them (Rowan, Alternative Concept). Since it is conducted on an animal, whose anatomy and physiology is well defined, it is considered as the easiest experimentation techniques than clinical research methods. “In contrast to clinical researches, it is often time consuming, and these facts make it much common method in animal experimentation field” (Rowan, Alternative Concept). However, the easier it is, the less reliable it is. “The damage to human health and medical science caused by vivisection ranges from the more visible harm caused by dangerous drugs that have passed animal tests, to medically invasive attitude that vivisection has helped advance” (Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine). These experiments can only be conducted on animals that are kept in an artificial condition such as isolated cages. That means for animal experimentations animals are caught from their original habitat and kept in isolated cages. These sudden differences in their habitat will put animals in stress. This stress will affect animals’ physical and mental capability, and will have a serious impact on experimentation results, which can even change the experimentation results (Cohen, A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation). This fact will once again clarify the unreliability of animal experimentation.

Tissue transplantation in animal experiments refers to the transplantation of animal tissues to other animals and humans got to conduct tests and studies on it (Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine). Let us check what happened in some tissue transplantation. When polio vaccines grown on monkey’s kidney cell transplanted to humans, it end up in the exposion of millions of Americans to Simian Virus 40. When researchers transplanted Baboon bone marrow into an AIDS patient, a large number of Baboon Viruses, which he could spread to others, accompanied to his body (Cohen, A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation). These examples prove that instead of helping to fight against existing diseases, animal experimentation may end up in new diseases. Furthermore, there is a chance for human beings, who work in or live around a lab, to become affected by deadly micro-organisms such as viruses and bacteria. The death of 16 laboratory workers, who were exposed to Marburg Virus and the two out brakes of the Ebola virus in American monkey colonies are a few examples of this (Cohen, A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation, 2). Through these facts one can come in to a conclusion that animal experimentation is not just a cruelty to animals, but is also a development of threats to humans.

Now it is the time to check some facts and medicines that are approved by animal experimentation for no side effects and its reliability. Animal experimentation repeatedly failed to prove the relation between asbestos and cancer. It delayed the proper work place precautions against asbestos until clinical studies proved that it will cause cancer. Similarly animal experimentation repeatedly failed to prove the risk from exposure to low level ionizing radiations from diagnostic X-rays and nuclear wastes. Clioquinol, an anti-diarrhea drug, killed more than 2,000 people and produced more than 30,000 blind and paralyzed people; Isoproternol, an anti – asthma drug, killed more than 3,500 people; Thalidomide, an anti – nausea drug, caused birth defect in more than 10, 000 people and still births in more than 3,000 people; and, Clofibrate, an anti – cholesterol drug, increases the possibility of heart attacks by 37%, are some other drugs that are approved for no serious side effects after animal testing. The most interesting among this is the fact about the cigarettes, which was once considered as a social drug, was tested on animals for detecting its relation to lung cancer and founded no serious side effects, is killing 420,000 humans per year (Cohen, “A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation”, 3 and “ Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine.

Likewise, many important medical advances are delayed because of misleading information derived from animal experimentation. The experiment to produce  cirrhosis by excessive alcohol ingestion have failed constantly in animals, and now it is a well known truth that excessive alcohol consumption is the major cause of cirrhosis.  Studies on monkeys falsely indicated that Polio Virus only infects the nervous system. This assumption misdirected preventive measures and delayed the development of tissue culture method to discover a vaccine. Similarly the development of surgery to replace the clogged arteries with the patients owns veins, failed in animal experimentation, and now it is a widely using mechanics. Moreover, the kidney transplantation experiments are quickly rejected in healthy dogs was accepted for a much longer time in human patients (Cohen, A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation, 2).

Since the need for reliability is increasing the validity of animal experimentation is decreasing. Researches, other than animal experimenters will grant more dependable knowledge and save the lives of poor animals at the same time. With these experiments one can find more precise details than animal experimentation. The Nobel Prize winning development of Polio vaccine by cell culture, the process or technique of making body tissue grow in a medium outside the organism, was a failure during the animal experimentation, is an excellent example for this (Rowan, The Alternative Concept). Since, animal experimentation has a strong root in our scientific world; it is not easy to take them out all at once. Instead of that other reliable alternatives must be applied. The principle of “Three R’s”, refinement, reduction and replacement, developed by two British scientists, is considered as the best alternative for animal experimentation developed so far. (Rowan, The Alternative Concept).  Even though each of these methods has its own value, they are interlinked to each other.

Refinement is described as the modification of a technique to reduce pain and distress experienced by research animals. For example, various jackets and tether systems have been developed to protect catheters which are inserted into research animals, which later allow an investigator to administrate doses of test chemicals, and take blood samples from an animal without straining it (Rowan, The Alternative Concept). Reduction is the cutting down the number of animals needed for an experiment (Rowan, The Alternative Concept). By this method, we can reduce the number of animals that are used for an experiment by a large amount, and, since we are just reducing the ratio of the animals, it would not affect the results. The deduction of 4 million animals out of 4.5 million animals from experiments on cancer by the Cancer Researching Center, which does not show any serious changes in their results yet, is considered as the biggest move ever done in this field (Rowan, The Alternative Concept). Even though, these two techniques do not save that much animal life, it will reduce the distress and pain of an animal caused by the capture and restrain.

Replacement is refered to as the substitution of new techniques for experiments in the place of animal experimentation. Since replacement can provide reliable results and save the lives of animals; it has a significant place among the animal experimentation alternatives. There are a lot of replacement techniques. An epidemiology or population study is one among them. In contrast to artificial animal model conditions, which generally differ from humans in causes, and mechanism of diseases, epidemiology can explain many human conditions more accurately. For instance, the identification of risk factors for heart disease, which is important for prevention techniques, is derived from population studies. (Cohen, 1). Patient study is another important example for replacement. Patient studies will open doors to the direct study of a disease by monitoring human patients. Modern imaging devices such as CAT, MRI, PET and SPECT scans are widely used in these types of experiments and they have contributed greatly to medical knowledge (Cohen, 3).

Tissue culture is another important alternative. Vaccines made from human tissue cultures are more effective, safer and less expensive than other types (Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine). On the other hand, monkey tissue vaccine has the serious danger of animal virus contamination. Cell culture, another sensitive and reliable technique replaced many animal viral vaccines. (Cohen, 5) Development of computes technology can also be used in this field. Through this technology one can keep detailed and comprehensive chart of drug side effects. This type of chart will help one to find out dangerous side effects immediately. The anti-cancer properties of medications, like prednisone and acitnomycin, chlorpromazine’s tranquilizing effect, and the mood elevating effect of MAO-inhibitor, were all discovered through clinical observation of side effects (Cohen, 5). When the list of useful techniques going long like this, how can someone say, there are no effective alternatives for animal experimentation, and depend on unreliable animal experimentation?

Yes, humans do need to be careful of certain products they make; however, with this much development in technology, it would be ridiculous to argue that animal experimentation is the only way to solve human problems. It is time to change our scientific systems. We should follow the principle of the three R’s for saving the lives of poor animal lives, and our own life. After years and years human concept about animal testing is changing and the numbers of people against animal experiments are getting bigger. It is the time to show our human values. It is the time to use our brain, which is not developed in animals as in humans. Be one among those people who are behind the banner “say no to animal experimentation.