Every year, more than 100 million animals including rats, mice, dogs, cats, hamsters, frogs, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish and birds are exploited around the world for medical training, curiosity-driven experiments and for chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Indonesia has the most endangered mammal species than any other country. The use of animals in scientific research has long been the subject of heated debate. On one hand it is considered morally wrong to use animals in this way solely for human benefit, on the other hand, removing animals completely from the laboratory would impede our understanding of health and disease, and consequently affect the development of new and vital treatments. I strongly disapprove using animals for scientific research as there are chances of these researches going wrong and the life of the poor animal being lost. These animals are subjected to physiological and psychological suffering for scientific testing. As a replacement, scientists should and have moved on to develop and use methods for studying diseases and testing products that replace animals and are actually relevant to human health. These modern methods could include, sophisticated tests using human cells and tissues and advanced computer-modeling techniques, even humans could be considered. It shouldn’t be vital to use animals when scientists today have already been able to advance their knowledge about human health by testing on model organisms. Sometimes it is pointless to use animals for testing drugs which could be of benefit to humans, one because these drugs could be bad for the animal body and two, because it isn’t necessary they have the same impact on human beings. I find it unacceptable to use animals in scientific research.
- The reader is a grade 8 student based in Dubai
