Animal testing is essential for medical and scientific progress, yet debates persist over its unethical nature and unnecessary use. With appropriate regulations and alternative methods emerging, a reassessment of the necessity for animal testing is required.
Animal testing involves using animals for medical experiments to study biological phenomena. It is widely used for research and education in biology, agriculture, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and medicine. Animal testing is extensively employed in various experiments, including safety testing for most pharmaceuticals and cosmetics we use, psychological experiments like Pavlov’s dogs, and biological research. Particularly in modern society, the importance of animal testing is increasingly emphasized to enable rapid responses whenever new diseases emerge or existing diseases mutate. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, animal testing was an indispensable step in the vaccine development process, and it is undeniable that this saved millions of lives.
Examining past perceptions of animal testing, Saint Augustine stated, “It is God’s will that animals be used for humans, and it is just for people to raise and use animals.” Descartes also claimed, “Animals are like machines operating without consciousness, so exploiting them is not morally wrong.” In the past, animal testing was often conducted without significant guilt, and even renowned philosophers made statements that treated it as a given. These views reflected the ethical standards of the time, which tended to understand the relationship between humans and animals as a purely instrumental one.
However, as time passed, people’s perceptions of animals gradually changed. The unethical nature of animal testing began to be raised as an issue, leading to the emergence of opposing views. In modern times, with the development of bioethics, animals have come to be recognized as beings capable of feeling emotions and pain. This has sparked vigorous debate about the ethical justification of animal testing. Initially, the unethical nature of animal testing was the primary reason for opposition. However, as technology advanced, the necessity for animal testing diminished, strengthening the arguments against it.
The book I recently reviewed, ‘Sacred Cows and Golden Geese’, aligns with this trend, presenting arguments against animal testing. As the author states in the introduction, this book goes beyond merely appealing to people’s moral sensibilities by pointing out the unethical nature of animal testing. Instead, it argues for the unnecessary nature of animal testing using various grounds.
When I first read this book, I was swayed by the author’s arguments and diverse evidence, leading me to believe animal testing was wrong. However, upon researching further, I came to believe animal testing is indeed necessary. Therefore, I now intend to refute this book’s arguments and discuss the necessity of animal testing.
The primary argument presented in this book is that animal testing is meaningless even if conducted. It asserts the unnecessary nature of animal testing by providing examples across various fields where it is used—such as new drug development, cancer research, cardiovascular disease, AIDS, and xenotransplantation—to illustrate why it is unnecessary. Even in ‘Sacred Cows and Golden Geese’ alone, numerous cases are presented. The authors later wrote another book, ‘Science in Disguise: Animal Experiments’, to discuss topics not fully covered in the earlier work. They present additional theoretical grounds for why animal testing is invalid, demonstrate its unnecessary nature in fields like internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and neurological disorders, and propose alternatives to animal testing in medicine. Overall, the authors present an astonishingly large number of cases where animal testing proved meaningless. But were there truly only cases where animal testing was meaningless?
Certainly, as the book points out, there are cases where animal testing indicated harmfulness but proved harmless to humans. Yet, considering that animal testing often allows for the early detection of harmfulness, it is incorrect to dismiss animal testing entirely based on a few such cases. Animal testing is essential for maximizing human safety. One example is the sulfanilamide incident in the United States. Developed in the United States in 1937, sulfanilamide was an antibiotic expected to be highly effective in humans. It was used on people without animal testing, resulting in the deaths of 107 individuals. Subsequent animal testing later revealed its toxicity in animals as well. This incident is frequently cited as a stark example demonstrating the critical importance of animal testing.
Additionally, there was the humidifier disinfectant incident in South Korea in 2011. This incident resulted in 78 deaths in South Korea alone among people who used humidifier disinfectants. What caused these fatalities? The disinfectant substance used in the humidifier disinfectants was a disinfectant that had been used in various products for a long time without major problems. Therefore, it was used in humidifier disinfectants without undergoing special animal testing. However, due to the nature of humidifiers, the particles of the disinfectant were broken down into smaller pieces and sprayed, leading to their absorption into the lungs and becoming toxic. In this case too, if various animal experiments had been conducted on the disinfectant, the incident could have been prevented.
There are countless areas where animal testing is essential. For instance, most genetic research is conducted using laboratory animals. In Morgan’s experiments, he used fruit flies to understand reciprocal inheritance. Morgan’s colleague Müller conducted research exposing fruit flies to X-rays, leading to discoveries about the causes of mutations. Without using animals in these experiments, the research would have been impossible. Pasteur, who created the first vaccine, also researched and developed vaccines using dogs and rabbits. Professor Prusiner, who discovered prions—the cause of mad cow disease—and won the Nobel Prize, also conducted his research using mice and hamsters. Exploration of unknown spaces like outer space and the deep sea also sends animals ahead of humans to test safety. Testing using animals allows humans to explore these unknown spaces more safely.
Unlike the past, rules like the 3Rs have been established recently to minimize the indiscriminate suffering of animals in animal testing. The 3Rs stand for Replace, Reduce, and Refine, principles designed to raise the ethical standards of animal experimentation. Furthermore, institutions conducting animal experiments are required to establish Animal Ethics Committees, and laboratory animals are managed under strict guidelines and regulations. These efforts to consider animal welfare demonstrate a commitment to minimizing the suffering inflicted on animals during the process, while acknowledging that animal experimentation remains a crucial scientific method.
Opponents of animal testing propose various alternative methods, such as computer modeling, human studies, cadaver dissection, and in vitro research. Certainly, when other methods exist that can replace animal testing, doing so is the right choice. However, when researching fundamental diseases and activities unique to living organisms, certain aspects cannot be replaced by other methods. In such cases, using animal testing may be the way to prevent greater harm to humans. Furthermore, research involving humans can be influenced by the difficulty of fully controlling the subjects, potentially affecting results. Animal testing, on the other hand, allows for easier control and can provide more accurate results.
Animal testing inevitably causes harm to animals. Therefore, indiscriminate animal testing is wrong. However, when conducted under appropriate regulations and proven necessary, animal testing can protect the health of many people and significantly contribute to scientific progress. Rather than banning animal testing solely on grounds of animal cruelty, it is right to conduct it only when unavoidable to prevent harm that could occur in humans. We should perform animal testing with gratitude and remorse for the experimental animals sacrificed in place of humans. Furthermore, we should recognize that the immense knowledge gained through animal testing has enabled our current level of development and maintain a sense of gratitude for the animals’ sacrifice.
