Thursday 11 November 2010

Animal Testing

Does animal testing work?
Yes	No
Animal testing has helped to develop vaccines against diseases like rabies, polio, measles, mumps, rubella and TB	Animal experiments can be misleading. An animal's response to a drug can be different to a human's
Antibiotics, HIV drugs, insulin and cancer treatments rely on animal tests. Other testing methods aren't advanced enough	Successful alternatives include test tube studies on human tissue cultures, statistics and computer models
Scientists claim there are no differences in lab animals and humans that cannot be factored into tests	The stress that animals endure in labs can affect experiments, making the results meaningless
Operations on animals helped to develop organ transplant and open-heart surgery techniques	Animals are still used to test items like cleaning products, which benefit mankind less than medicines or surgery

Is animal testing morally right?
Yes	No
Human life has greater intrinsic value than animal life	Animals have as much right to life as human beings
Legislation protects all lab animals from cruelty or mistreatment	Strict controls have not prevented researchers from abusing animals - although such instances are rare
Millions of animals are killed for food every year - if anything, medical research is a more worthy death	Deaths through research are absolutely unnecessary and are morally no different from murder
Few animals feel any pain as they are killed before they have the chance to suffer	When locked up they suffer tremendous stress. Can we know they don't feel pain?

Numbers of animals used in the UK in 2000
Animals	Number Used
Mouse	1,607,000
Rat	535,000
Other Rodent	71,500
Rabbit	39,700
Carnivore	11,600
Hoofed mammal	63,000
Primate	3,700
Other mammal	500
Bird	124,200
Reptile	15,600
Fish	243,000
TOTAL	2,714,800

Amal....xxxxxx