Bioethics Essay, Research Paper

One of the many issues of today’s conversations is still confusing on my understanding it. Is it ethical for people to engage in animal research for human excellence? And if so, just how far can animal research be taken to meet these achievements for human kind? When thinking about this, I would conclude that animals over human beings do not have any rights what so ever, but I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world by saying this due to believing my doggy (Frankey) has rights in our household. He definitely has a right if he wants to be picked up or petted a certain way etc. In other words, I am more confused than ever to take sides on this controversial issue and feel confident about it. Therefor, I will reveal many pros and cons on the subject of animal research and show that it might not be the best moral work, but it is highly necessary for humans to be free from diseases.

Through articles, I have found out that many research experiments have ignored a number of health problems that people endure. Among that list resides heart disease, cancer, strokes, AIDS, and birth defects. I learned that like humans, animals have multiple organs and very complex systems. It has been noted that these systems could mislead researchers and results due to the organs not being identical to that of a human’s body system. This indeed may be a fact in some experiments, but the world has many animals who have similar body make ups of humans, therefor we must investigate for the better of us. Other studies have showed that animal research has not been supreme answer to our worries.

Another study was the 1960 study of smoking. Unfortunately, animals inhaling smoke did not develop cancer and this of course delayed the government from lobbying to the public of the harshness of smoking. Yes this might have been the case, I did not see any research saying that humans would participate in inhaling large amounts of smoke for the better of mankind. Also, there was a study of cancerous chemicals being injected into animals and only 7 of the 19 were found in lab mice. At least they found something that told researchers that this was dangerous to them. Through all of this better research method have emerged, but how can you not experiment on living creatures to find out how it affects someone’s system as they are living? Let us switch gears for a minute.

There are many contributions to health because of animal research. Everyone knows of Pastuer and how he was one of the pioneers who participated in animal research and have found many successful results including isolating anthrax. Other scientist followed in his footsteps and discovered just how helpful the sterilization of surgical instruments would help everyone in hospitals today. Diphtheria, tetanus, rabies, whooping cough, and influenza type B are just some of the viruses and diseases that have been found and aided against due to research of animals. Not to mention this kind of research led to antibacterial and antibiotic drugs. We would be in deep you know what if we could not purchase “Nyquil” for our coughs! Even family members come to mind when I think of animal research. If it were not for Gibbon perfecting open heart surgery, I would not have a grandmother walking around today. Another method I am thankful for that used animals in research is kidney dialysis. Once again, my other grandmother would not be around if it were not researched.

In conclusion, I see the world is going through a phase of “moral self doubt” about the usage of animals. One has to realize that yes the research does not produce the most rewarding results at times, but it does produce some kind of data that humans did not have before hand. We are EXPERIMENTING and trails of trying and trying again has to occur to achieve perfection. Animals have the closest body make up of humans and like I said before it might not be the most ethical action to take, but it is very necessary to do so!

Bibliography

Benard and Kaufman; Scientific American “Animal Research Is Wasteful and Misleading”, February 1997.

Botting and Morrison; Scientific American “American Reserch Is Vital to Medicine”, February 1997.