Why We Oppose Animal Testing
Cruel and ineffective, animal testing is a common result of the experimentation process. Many human diseases, including major forms of heart disease, many forms of cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia, do not occur naturally in animals. Instead, researchers try to induce symptoms of these diseases in animals in labs artificially. However, these studies trivialize the myriad factors—genetic, social, economic, psychological, and experiential—that contribute to an individual’s health.
Thus, it should be no surprise that therapies that show “promise” in animals rarely pan out in humans. Aside from the obvious waste of resources (time, money, and animal lives) and immense suffering, effective treatments are being erroneously rejected, while harmful ones are being allowed. We do not think the scientific evidence supports the claims made in favor of animal testing based largely on anecdotes.
Misleading Animal Experiments
92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials, even though they seemed safe and worked well in animal tests. This is usually because of safety concerns or because they don’t work.
After going through clinical trials, only 4% of urology drugs are approved. This is followed by a 5% positive outcome for heart drugs, a 5% success rate for cancer drugs, and a 6% success rate for neurology drugs.
92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials, even though they seemed safe and worked well in animal tests. This is usually because of safety concerns or because they don’t work.
After going through clinical trials, only 4% of urology drugs are approved. This is followed by a 5% positive outcome for heart drugs, a 5% success rate for cancer drugs, and a 6% success rate for neurology drugs.
Research has shown that testing a drug on dogs, rats, mice, and rabbits to see if it will be safe for humans doesn’t tell us very much. Our study also showed that drug tests on monkeys are just as bad at predicting how they will affect people as tests on any other species.
A recent study found that animal tests could only accurately predict 19% of the 93 potentially harmful side effects of pharmaceutical drugs.
They have deemed the findings of another study successful in tests conducted on animals; however, of the approximately 10% of these treatments tested on humans, none performed adequately.
According to a review of those discoveries, only 5% of the 101 high-impact findings based on fundamental animal research were approved as treatments within 20 years. More recently, researchers investigated 27 significant breakthroughs in animal-based research that had been reported in the UK 25 years earlier in the press.
In line with the earlier research findings, we discovered that only one of the 27 breakthroughs had been successfully implemented in humans, and even then, several restrictions were placed on it.
Today, more than ever, in this era of personalized medicine, the medical industry needs to be given serious consideration. However, the futile reliance on non-human species as role models for humans must be ended. We will not see the long-awaited medical advances until we give up using animals as test subjects and give equal attention to studying women as we do to studying men.