Of course, yes. Without animal testing we would most likely have a lot more useful medicines as time would not have been wasted on useless methods. I found
Europeans for Medical Progress to be the most helpful website for explaining why animal testing doesn't work and the alternatives. Europeans For Medical Progress are not an animal rights group. They oppose animal experimentation purely because it doesn't work.
That is not entirely true. It DOES work that way sometimes. I'm studying to be a vet tech, and trust me it is impossible to know exactly how a drug will work without testing it on someone. Some drugs do work for instance but cause too many side effects that were not anticpated during developement. Would you really want to use a new drug for cancer that
should work but was never tested before? How do you know it is safe? Cancer is the rapid growth of cells (your cells); most meds for it affect other rapidly dividing cells. That's why people taking meds for or on chemo often have hair loss, digestion problems, and dry mouth. The treatment doesn't know the difference between normal healthy cells and cancer cells, so it attacks both. People didn't know this until after the treatments were tested. Thankfully new drugs have been developed to limit such side effects, and yes I suspect they were tested on animals before people.
We wouldn't have more drugs that work if we did away with testing; we would have more drugs with serious side effects and
fewer new drugs coming out. These testings are not useless! Yes some drugs that work on animals do not work on people and vice versa. But cmon, drugs that only work on animals can be used for our pets. I believe that's how one of the current arthititis medications for dogs came about. It's good to have some testing done.
I'm all for
limiting animal testing for mediences (and outright banning animal tests for cosmetics, chemicals, etc). They should only be used when the drug is further along its development when sciencetists are fairly certain it will work correctly. Such testing should not be used when the drug is first thought up. Alternatives should be used to elimate side effects if possible, but ultimately the drug should be tested on subjects to determine effectiveness. As long as the animals are cared for and relatively happy, I don't mind them being used.
Testing on them helps find cures, medications, and treatments for other animals and people.
What often affects the success of the drugs is stress (and pain). Animals being used for tests cannot be stressed, need proper nutrition, and need other general care. No one gets better from the flu without rest, plenty of fluids, and good food in addition to medication; the same applies for test animals. Therefore most labs try to take decent care of their animals to elimaite that variable during testing.
And please don't say all labs abuse their animals. That is a balant lie. :grumpy: I've been to a medical research lab before and found they take better care of their research animals than some people do of their pets. I don't think I could work in such a place (I couldn't give an animal a drug that might not work), but there is nothing wrong with all of such places. I simply want those animals to be treated with respect and for federal regulations followed all the time.
Real-Life Example:
I can't help but think where diabetics today would be without the use of rabbits and other lab animals. Diabetes mellitus is when the body either doesn't produce insulin (type 1) or the body doesn't respond to insulin (type 2). (Type 3 happens to pregnant women and normally disappears when the pregnancy ends) Insulin is produced in the prancreas. Since insulin lowers blood sugar levels by sending gluscose to the body's cells, diabetics have dangorously high blood sugar levels and are unable to send sugars to their body's cells. The sugar spills into the urine when blood is filtered in the kidneys, causing sugar to appear in a person's urine.
In addition because the person cannot use sugars for cellular fuel, the body goes to extremes and looks to other sources for sugar (or glucose). One source is fats. The breakdown of fats forms ketones. Such fat metabolism also occurs in fasting and stravation, which should give you an idea of what's happening to diabetics: their bodies are straving! Like glucose, these ketones can spill into the urine, giving the urine a fruity smell, and can cause a potentially serious complication in diabetics called ketoacidosis. That happens when diabetics do not moniter or control their disease.
In the past people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes did not live long lives. Those with type 1 normally died in childhood, and those with type 2 only lived past childhood because they developed diabetes as adults. No one even understood why these people were so ill; they only knew that the person drank a lot of water and urinated a lot (which is why sugar diabetes and the unrelated water diabetes have the same name). They didn't understand why such people were so thin despite eating plenty of food or how to treat them. Some people made diets that helped; however nothing made the problem go away.
It wasn't until the 1900s that doctors and scientists finally fingered out what was wrong (by noticing the similarities of dogs without their pancreases), and many more years would pass until they finally had something to offer (after successful testing on a de-pancrasised dog). What they had to offer was insulin from rabbits and dogs! By using lab rabbits and dog pancreases, they found a way to use their insulin to treat type 1 diabetes (type 2 is treated in a different way because the body doesn't respond to insulin). In 1922 the first human (a 14-year-old boy) was successfully treated with purified insulin. It makes sense now: the person can't make their own insulin so he or she needs an outside source. But in the 1920s this was revolutionary! Diabetics finally had a chance to live normal lives. This discovery also led to the discovery of type 2 diabetes since those patients didn't respond to the new therapy.
And it wasn't until recently that doctors were able to produce sythetic insulin, so many diabetics relied on lab animals for their treatment. What would have happened to them if we hadn't? And what would happen to the pets that also have diabetes? Such individuals would have more or less straved to death!
I wonder why people at PETA don't seem to understand that. They say we should have never used animals in the first place for medical testing, but their current president has diabetes! What hypocrits! They went as far as saying they wouldn't want to find a cure for AIDS or cancer if it involved animal testing. I guess they don't care that so many people will die of those diseases or that animals themselves suffer from similar diseases.
I'm sorry if I offend anyone. This is just my opinion, and much of it is based on
fact. I dislike PETA's stance on animal welfare (way too extreme and inconsistent; plus they distort facts) and dislike how so many people think ALL animal testing is pointless and that ALL medical labs are cruel to their research animals. Some testing is pointless, and that's why I feel we should just limit its use thru federal regulation et al.
