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Animals have the right to be treated as beings of value in themselves, not as the means to human ends; this principle must be applies in order to guarantee the end of cruelty to animals. The application of this principle means that animals should never be experimented upon whatever the potential gain for humanity. To infect monkeys with the AIDS virus or to expose rodents to toxic chemicals and radiation is simply not acceptable, whatever the supposed benefits.
In practice, as everyone knows, animals are not routinely treated well by animal experimenters. Apart from the fact that millions of animals die each year in experiments, others are often not adequately anaesthetised and are abused by handlers and experimenters. It is idealistic to suppose that this will ever stop as long as society endorses vivisection.
In fact few breakthroughs have been made as a result of animal experimentation - its advocates have overstated its achievements. There has been a catalogue of errors and failures in animal testing, which its advocates gloss over; as many as half the drugs that have been approved in the US and the UK after animal testing have subsequently had to be withdrawn because of harmful side-effects. Furthermore, there are alternatives to many tests that are currently done on animals - e.g. growing tissue or cell cultures from human cells in the laboratory.
In fact, most animal experiments are done on animals that are nothing like human beings - rats and mice - which undermines the argument that these experiments are a reliable guide to human reactions. Scientifically, as well as morally, most animal experimentation is to be rejected - the reaction of a mouse to a substance is no guide to human reactions. Each species has its own unique physiology. And the more similar an animal is to a human being - e.g. a chimpanzee - the more intelligent and sentient it is, and so the more immoral it is to treat is as a disposable and worthless biological object.
The advent of genetic technologies has made possible all sorts of new and horrific acts of animal exploitation, from cloning sheep to creating mutant and hybrid creatures with no dignity or quality of life at all. We should end animal experimentation before things get even worse.
It is only acceptable to test human medicines on human beings if they give their consent. Non-human animals are never able to give such consent. It is therefore never acceptable to test medicines on perfectly healthy animals, even if the treatments are for use on other animals.
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Article added to SearchWarp.com on Tuesday, October 07, 2008 View other articles written by Aaratrika Bose(405)
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