Animals were friends or foes of humanity at different stages of the human history. In modern times, experiments upon animals have been a breeding ground for spirited debate. Some animal rights activists argue that we should ban animal experiments altogether because subjecting animals to experimentation is unwarranted on moral grounds, whereas some other people contend that the advancement of science necessitates animal testing. Personally, I am in favor of the latter view.
Granted, mounting empirical evidence suggests that many animal experiments are performed callously without any heed to the discomfort or pain that laboratory mammals endure. For one thing, improper confinement of test animals such as locking them up in cramped cages is inhumane; and this, in turn, can severely disrupt natural biological functions of the test animal. For another, the effects of vaccination or vivisection conducted on live mammals can be chilling. In extreme cases, they constitute sheer torture of animals.
Nevertheless, from a more pragmatic standpoint, evidence abounds that animal subjects are still an indispensable part of scientific research at this phase of human development. In the first place, drug experimentation on live mammals is, indisputably, far more effectual than experimentation on bacteria or on other lower species in determining drug safety. Medical history informs that drugs that can potentially exert grave side effects on homo sapiens must be tested by pharmaceutical companies on live mammals first to ascertain their toxicity. In the second place, in the realm of space research, live animals are still practical alternatives on a flight not considered to be sufficiently safe for human astronauts. And I would be hard-pressed to imagine the scenario that human lives should be put at stake when the objective of a space mission is merely to identify living creatures’ reaction to outer space experience. Lastly, lab research about the behavioral tendencies of chimpanzees, gorillas or other members of the primate group is also a worthy endeavor, in light of the fact that it generates outcomes consistently advancing anthropological and genetic sciences.
