The document discusses the ethical debates surrounding animal research, highlighting both the contributions to medical advancements and the moral concerns regarding animal welfare. It outlines the pros and cons of animal testing, mentioning that while it has led to significant medical breakthroughs, it is criticized for being cruel and often unreliable in predicting human outcomes. The text also emphasizes the importance of regulatory frameworks and alternative research methods that aim to minimize animal suffering.

1. The Ethics of
Animal Research

2. Animal Testing
• The use of animals in
scientific testing has always
been, and will continue to
be a controversial subject.
• While controversial, it is an
unavoidable fact that animal
research has allowed the
development of medicines
and vaccines, surgical
techniques and advanced
scientific understanding in
many areas.

3. Animal Testing
 It is estimated that between 50 and
100 million animals are used in
research each year.
 Some are purpose bred for testing
but many are still caught in the wild.
 The U.S. Department of Agriculture
defines a painful procedure as one
that would “reasonably be expected
to cause more than slight or
momentary pain or distress in a
human being to which the
procedure was applied”

4. Measuring Pain and Suffering in Animal Testing
In the UK experiments are
classified as mild, moderate
or substantial in the amount
of suffering they cause an
animal.
A fourth category of
unclassified is used when
the animal is anaesthetized
but killed before regaining
consciousness.

5. Is Animal Testing Morally Right?
Advocates for animal testing
say:
Human life has greater intrinsic
value than animal life
Legislation protects all lab
animals from cruelty or
mistreatment
Millions of animals are killed
every year for food, is medical
research not a more worthy death
Few animals feel pain and are
killed before they suffer
The argument between pro-animal testing parties and
opponents to animal testing hinges on whether it is ethical.

6. PROS AND CONS ARGUEMENT
• Pro 1
Animal testing contributes to
life-saving cures and
treatments for humans and
animals alike.
To name just a few examples,
animal research has
contributed to major advances
in treating conditions including
breast cancer, brain injury,
childhood leukemia, cystic
fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, and
tuberculosis.
https://animal-testing.procon.org/
Con 1
Animal testing is cruel and
inhumane.
Animals used in experiments are
commonly subjected to force
feeding, food and water
deprivation, the infliction of burns
and other wounds to study the
healing process, the infliction of
pain to study its effects and
remedies, and “killing by carbon
dioxide asphyxiation, neck-
breaking, decapitation, or other
means,” according to Humane
Society International.

7. Pro 2
Animals are appropriate
research subjects because
they are similar to human
beings in many ways.
• Chimpanzees share 99% of
their DNA with humans, and
mice are 98% genetically
similar to humans. All
mammals, including humans,
are descended from
common ancestors, and all
have the same set of organs
(heart, kidneys, lungs, etc.)
that function in essentially
the same way with the help
of a bloodstream and central
nervous system.
Con 2
Animal tests do not reliably
predict results in human beings.
94% of drugs that pass animal
tests fail in human clinical trials.
Over 100 stroke drugs and over
85 HIV vaccines failed in humans
after succeeding in animal trials.
Nearly 150 clinical trials (human
tests) of treatments to reduce
inflammation in critically ill
patients have been undertaken,
and all of them failed, despite
being successful in animal tests.

8. Pro 3
Animal research is highly
regulated, with laws in place to
protect animals from
mistreatment.
• In addition to local and state
laws and guidelines, animal
research has been regulated
by the federal Animal Welfare
Act (AWA) since 1966. As well
as stipulating minimum
housing standards for
research animals (enclosure
size, temperature, access to
clean food and water, and
others), the AWA also requires
regular inspections by
veterinarians
Con 3
Alternative testing methods now exist
that can replace the need for animals.
Other research methods such as in vitro
testing (tests done on human cells or
tissue in a petri dish) offer opportunities
to reduce or replace animal testing.
Technological advancements in 3D
printing allow the possibility for tissue
bioprinting: a French company is
working to bioprint a liver that can test
the toxicity of a drug. Artificial human
skin, such as the commercially available
products EpiDerm and ThinCert, can be
made from sheets of human skin cells
grown in test tubes or plastic wells and
may produce more useful results than
testing chemicals on animal skin.

9. Pros summary
• Animals are involved in many kinds of research and innovation,
ranging from fundamental biological and medical research aimed at
new discoveries, to studies aimed at:
• improving animal health and welfare
• understanding animal behaviour and human relationships with
animals
• improving agricultural practices and technologies
• aiding conservation efforts
• Animals are used to study human and animal biology in health and
disease, to determine the safety and efficacy of potential new
treatments, as well as in the validation of alternative approaches.
Such research has provided, and continues to provide, the
important information for advancing:
• our understanding of how living organisms function
• improvements in medical and veterinary knowledge, education and
practice

10. Cons summary
1. Violation of animal rights
2. Animal testing is archaic
3. Animal testing is wasteful and expensive
• 4. Inaccurate test results
• 5. Availability of decent alternatives

11. Is Animal Testing Morally Right?
 Opponents to animal testing
say:
 Animals have as much right to
live as humans
 Strict controls have not
prevented some animals being
abused, though such instances
are rare
 Deaths for research are
unnecessary
 Animals suffer while they are
locked up and how do we know
when they do and don’t feel
pain

12. What are the principles of the
3Rs in animal research?
•The guiding principles for the use of
animals in research are the three R’s:
• Replacement: Use alternative, non-animal
methods to achieve the same scientific aim
• Reduction: Use statistical methods so that a
smaller number of animals are required
• Refinement: Improve the experiments so that
animals do not suffer

13. Ethical Dilemmas
• British law requires that any new medicinal drug to
be used on humans must undergo a substantial
testing program including testing on at least two
different species of live mammal.
• One of which must be a large non-rodent.
• This of course means that any company wanting to
release a medical drug must, by law, undertake
animal testing regardless of how they fell about it
ethically.

14. Before any decision to use animals is made,
independent ethical assessments are conducted to
assess if the research and procedures are justified.
• Review by the body compares the potential
benefits of the proposed experiments with the
likely costs in terms of any possible suffering.
• The following points are considered:
• Needs and benefits
• Costs and harms (direct)
• Associated harms (unrelated to the research purpose)
Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body

15. The Importance of Animals in
Biomedical Research
American Association for
Laboratory Animal Science 9190
Crestwyn Hills Drive, Memphis,
TN

16. • Throughout history, scientists have been solving medical problems,
developing new techniques and treatments, and curing diseases –
all by using animals in biomedical research.
• How exactly has animal research helped you and your family?
• Vaccinations for polio, diphtheria, mumps, measles, rubella,
pertussis, and hepatitis.
• Treatments for asthma, severe burns, juvenile diabetes, leukemia,
newborn sickness and premature births. Prevention and treatment
of birth defects.
• Antibiotics for a variety of bacterial infections. Microsurgery to
reattach severed limbs. Remedies for childhood poisonings.
Management of epilepsy, cystic fibrosis.
• Organ transplants. Correction of congenital heart defects. Without
animal research:
• Polio would kill or cripple thousands of unvaccinated adults and
children each year. Most of the nation’s one million insulin-
dependent diabetics would be dead

17. • Chemotherapy wouldn’t exist – and couldn’t save 70
percent of children who now survive acute lymphocytic
leukemia. People disabled by strokes or spinal cord
injuries could not benefit from rehabilitation techniques.
• Newborns who develop jaundice each year would
contract cerebral palsy, now preventable through
phototherapy. There would be no kidney dialysis.
Surgery of any type would be rare – and extremely
painful – because there would be no anesthesia.
• Smallpox, which has been eradicated, would continue
unchecked. Millions of dogs, cats, other pets and farm
animals would have died from anthrax, distemper,
canine parvovirus, feline leukemia, rabies and more than
200 other diseases now preventable.

18. • They have either been eradicated or can be controlled
due to findings from research using animals. Example:
Poliomyelitis (Polio).
• Leprosy According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), over the past fifteen years, around 11 million
leprosy patients have been cured. The prevalence rate of
the disease has dropped by 85% and leprosy has been
eliminated from 98 countries.
• Smallpox On May delegates to the Thirty-third World
Health Assembly, representing all 155 Member States of
the World Health Organization, unanimously accepted
the conclusions of the Global Commission for the
Certification of Smallpox Eradication (World Health
Organization, 1980), namely that: Smallpox eradication
had been achieved throughout the world.

19. • Life-saving surgical procedures; Cancer therapies; Organ
transplantation; Vaccines; Safe consumer products; and
Treatments and cures for countless other medical
disorders and diseases. Daily, from vaccinations to
prevent measles to product safety testing, the knowledge
gained from animals used in research helps every single
one of us, our pets, and the wildlife around us.
• Reproductive techniques discovered through animal
research can potentially save many endangered wildlife
species from extinction.
• Virtually every major medical advance for both humans
and animals has been achieved through biomedical
research using animal models to study and find a cure for
a disease and through animal testing to prove the safety
and efficacy of a new treatment.

20. • Susceptible to the same diseases that affect humans –Both
humans and animals share some of the same diseases including
many cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. One example of this
similarity is the dog whose cardiovascular system closely
resembles that of the human.
• Because of this, the dog has been critical to understanding
diseases that affect the heart and circulatory system.
• A few of the many successful medical breakthroughs in this one
body system that can be attributed to the dog and that are now
commonly applied to humans includes: Heart transplantation
Development of the heart-lung machine which allows surgeons to
keep the patient alive while performing heart surgery Coronary
bypass surgery Artificial heart valves used to replace damaged or
defective valves Pacemaker implantation needed to regulate an
abnormal heartbeat Angioplasty used to unblock clogged
coronary arteries

21. • Laboratory mice are used in research more often than
any other animal species; These mice, plus other
rodents such as rats and hamsters, make up more than
90% of the total number of animals needed;
• Other animal species, including dogs, cats, rabbits,
farm animals, fish, frogs, birds, nonhuman primates,
and many others, make up the remaining 10% of
animals needed in research.
• Laboratory mice are used in research more often than
any other animal species; It is estimated that nearly 20
million rodents are bred for research annually.
• Mice are used for studies of cancer, aging, AIDS,
immunology, and genetics. They are also used to learn
and perfect embryo transfer techniques in humans and
domestic and endangered animal species.