Do animal testing animals feel pain?

Cthulhu - Animal testing has saved NUMEROUS human lives. But it is no longer always the most effective, humane use of an animal’s life. I am a vegetarian also. I am against factory farming and the cruelty it involves. There is also tremendous cruelty involved with animal testing. And I am not talking about the testing in itself. I am talking about the cruel treatment of the animals before and after the testing. All animals are sacrificed after testing, once used for testing they can’t be reused. They are supposed to be killed in a humane manner. Many, many times they are not. Researchers balk at paying for the cost of euthanasia drugs, preferring to snap the spinal cord. Many researchers don’t have the strength to perform this. Others resort to the smash technique. Grab the tail, swing and smash the skull on the wall or floor. I can’t tell you the number of times I have passed the dead animal disposal bin and heard the dumped animals that are still alive, left there to be incinerated. A horrible way to die. The animals are kept in very small cages and develop “cage syndrome” Raised in a small bin, sometimes the size of a shoebox, when taken out and placed on the floor, they will pace in a shape that resembles the container from which they came. Animals are not placed on earth to be tortured. And many of the ways animal are treated does just that. Would I ever select to let a rat live over saving the life of a child? NO. But I also believe that the rat should not be inhumanely treated during the testing process.

As a research biochemist, I can answer with some degree of knowledge. At one point, animal testing was necessary and vital to the development of pharmaceuticals. In many cases, that day has passed. There are currently numerous replacement models that may be used in place of animal models. Tumor lines can be sustained without the trocar method of “growing” the tumor on animals, cells can be procured and are viable through other means, organs can be harvested from cadavers… But, this is a multi-billion dollar industry and with research dogs costing upwards of $500 and rats upwards of $30, this is something that the research animal vendors want to support. As the majority of research is grant dependent, and if you don’t use your money from one quarter, you lose it, researchers are encouraged to spend grant dollars on high $ items, such as animals. Also a national data base would allow researchers to obtain information regarding causative results and thus eliminate the need for duplicate animal testing. It is a simple question, with a complicated answer. And one that I answered many years ago. I quit doing the phase of research that includes animal testing and instead am part of phase 3 and 4. Research on humans, with proper consent and a full understanding of the protocol.

I agree with you there. It’d be nice if labs had ethics boards that didn’t treat animals solely as resources to be used. I’m sure a lot of what goes on is unnecessary.

I don’t think we’re near the point where we can replace all animal testing with models and tissue cultures though. The body is such a complex system, and our ability to model it is so rudimentary, that we can’t expect the alternatives to reasonably catch all potential ways a new compound could interact with the body. The other tools we use to judge the safety of a compound aren’t complete replacements for animal testing. If you remove animals from the testing process at this point, eventually some life threatening complication that would have been found in the animal subject will instead be found in a human subject.

I think there’s going to be a place for animal testing for a while. In my eyes the problem is the lack of guidelines as to where in the testing process it should be used, which applications merit it, and what should be deemed unnecessary suffering.

Animal testing saves human lives.

I agree that animals should be granted some rights; that’s partly why I choose to be a vegetarian. At the same time I can’t understand how anyone could equate the rights of an animal with our own. Compared to animals, we have a larger capacity for suffering and are able to experience a wider variety of sufferings, so I think it’s reasonable to sacrifice the lives of a few animals to save the lives of many more humans.

It’s a balancing act: People have to decide which applications are worth the cost. Are safer cancer, diabetes, and asthma medications worth the pain of test animals? I think so. Is a new eyeshadow that makes your lashes look slightly thicker and longer than the old brand? Not so much…

There are labels that some brands use to tell the consumer that there’s been no animal testing. I don’t think there would be anything wrong with standardizing that system, so that people opposed to cosmetics, drugs, or medical procedures that were tested on animals can refrain from using them. I don’t think it would be right to force others to use medication that might be unsafe because you’re opposed to all forms of animal testing.

If you’re serious about preventing animal suffering, look into the sources for your meat. A huge portion of the meat supply in the US and other industrialized countries use “factory farming” practices, where no concern is paid to the well being of the animal so long as they can make a pound of meat a few cents cheaper. Some farms will keep an animal immobilized their entire life in order to cut costs. When you buy meat at McDonald’s, you’re supplying the need for a huge amount of animal suffering that could be avoided by spending a little more money on conventional farming practices.

Without animal testing, the field of research medicine would pretty much stall. You can’t ethically jump straight from the lab to humans, as any sane human values a human life far higher than an animal life. Besides, do you think scientists want to do animal testing if they can avoid it? Apart from the mess and difficulty of maintaining and caring for an animal population, nobody can completely harden themselves to drugging and then dissecting animals, even when they know the results are worth it.

Anyone who wants to stop animal testing has to realise that doing so will cost human lives - many of them. Either through ‘accelerated’ testing regimes testing drugs on humans prematurely, or because life-saving drugs that would otherwise have been available aren’t. There’s a very good chance you wouldn’t even be here today if not for a treatment that required animal testing to develop.

Well, think of it this way…If you were a prisoner that murdered a person and scientists used you as a test subject you would act malicious because of the pain and abuse so as soon as you were released (If you ever were) you’d probably continue harming other people. I think I’d be a little angry myself if strange people were messing around with my insides and poking me with needles.

…I completely agree though. Are animals really any less important than we are? We took over their world. They were here before us, and I’m mortified of all the animal abuse going around in the world. Unfortunately, scientists can’t precisely determine the success of a project unless the ‘victim’ is alive. Plants wouldn’t exactly help us! We would be the only other possibility, and there are laws against testing on humans.

If you strongly dislike the animal abuse in the world, sign a petition and don’t use products that are tested on animals. The more a product is purchased with animal test subjects, the more it’s going to happen. I agree with ichibanarky completely. I hate to say this, but I don’t think animals are going to have rights any time soon.

Why not just do it on prisioners? they are humans too and have rights. besides plently of them have been falsly accuced. I dont agree with animal testing either however a lot of the things that make your life better or even saves our lives had to be tested first

You can’t test on people - there are laws against it (it wasn’t always illegal).

Unfortunately, those laws don’t extend to animals.

If you feel strongly about it, the best you can do is make sure the products you use are cruelty-free and add your name to animal rights petitions.

Say what you want, but I have been there. My experience is not from articles, but first hand witness. Many, not all, researchers, once through with the animals don’t want to spend the money to humanely euthanize. It is one thing to spend your money on animals (more subjects = more data) on the front end and another to take care of them properly once used. I have worked in research in three large universities in the States and one abroad. Never, not once, in the States have I seen a regulator, but in Germany, an inspector or monitor visited twice each year, reviewed all your records regarding housing, feeding, administration of research drugs and killing and disposal of the animals.

I really dont see how abusing animals benifits mankind because most of us dont see anything as equal, we think of ourselfs first I agree, it is horrible they do gain knowlege, but all at the cost of inoccent life and from horrible experiments on things that if had a choice, wouldnt want to be tested on…I mean…imagine if you were an animal, would you want something “more intelligent” testing and doing experiments on you…no doing it on people would be the best option, because thats what everything is for none of it is for animals, its for people and if they had enough willing people (of which there are many) they wouldnt need to abuse things that didnt ask to be abused

…It shouldn’t be test on any living thing…

Tons of knowledge is gained through animal testing for the good of all mankind.

hmm lets test on kindergardeners instead lets test on u..

I agree 100%

YES!!! That’s how it shoud be in my opinion, but unfortuantly times have changed. -_-