Draft 2: Dissecting the Living - Animal Testing's Ugly Waters
Jessica Ramos
ENG 100
Assignment #3: I –Search Paper
Due: 12/4/14
Dissecting the Living – Animal Testing’s Ugly Waters
1. Proposal
I have chosen to write about testing biomedical products on animals. My research question is: Is there a necessity to test biomedical products on animals? I wonder this because I believe, as a future Veterinarian and a current Veterinary Technician, that animals should never be harmed or mistreated in any way. I have always believed that there were alternatives to testing on live animals, such as using stem cells or plants, but I have never done any research to confirm it. By using this topic, I will discover whether there is a true need to continue to test on animals or if there are good and trustable substitutes that can be implemented. In my research I will strive to educate about the topic of research with animals and the nature of that research as well as inform of the new substitutes, research laws and what is truly being enforced.
I will mainly use two sources to support the research in this paper. The first source will be the library database that my community college offers. From this source I will gather peer reviewed articles. The second source will be Google searches that I will narrow with key phrases such as “substitutes for animals in medical testing.” From my searches I will only use reliable websites and look for opinions of current researchers and doctors.
2. Process
In order to have concrete information for my paper, I went to Delaware County Community College’s Library Guide to begin my search for resources. I looked for full texts and peer reviewed articles on topics including animal testing and animals in medical research. From those searches I found two definite articles, one a PDF and another one a linked website that I will be using in my paper. Next I headed to Google where I typed in similar phrases, except this time I added alternatives to animals in medical testing. After gathering a few more websites, I changed my search to something I had been talking about with a coworker. I Googled the phrase vivisection and looked into the linked before taking a few off of the search query. I finally Googled one last phrase of testing on animals to see if there would be any change in results. Many were the same as I had received before, however a few new and promising ones showed up. I gathered all of the sites that I thought would be helpful and sent them in an email to myself titled Research for I-Search Paper. In the email I had subheadings for each hyperlink to keep myself organized.
The next day I went through my email and weeded through all of the links. In my excitement I had copy and pasted a few that turned out to not be quite so helpful in the research department and more helpful in self-knowledge. I then turned to my blog post on the New York Times: Room for Debate that I wrote on Animal Cruelty Laws. I looked through the authors and pulled some of their testimony from the debate as well as personal opinion from their blogs and websites.
3. Paper
Imagine a baby, only two days old, happy and full of life. Imagine a mother, loving and fierce, holding onto her baby and protecting him with her life. Now watch as that same mother is injected with a sedative so that she cannot hold or protect her baby. Watch as her baby is taken, screaming away from her, confused and scared. This baby is now transported to a glass room, no bigger than he is. There is barely enough room for him to move his little arms and legs around. Suddenly, large figures with frightening masks approach the baby, making loud noises and banging on the glass. The baby screams and cries, desperately banging on the walls, but no one comes to his rescue. His mother is forced to watch from another room just feet away, too sedated to be able to save her child. The baby begins to rock back and forth and claw at his own skin in fear and nervous anxiety. Imagine once more, however, instead of a human baby, see a baby chimpanzee and his mother. Realities such as the one described are happening every day in a National Health Institute facility in Poolesville, Maryland. There is no reason that this kind of testing should have to happen. In this paper I will argue why animal testing should not continue and give two alternative methods to use in replacement.
The road of animal testing has been a long and dreary one. Vivisection, as animal testing is known as to researchers, was once a respected process. Many would gather to watch as researchers tied animals down and opened them up in search of the key to human functioning. Dr. Nuno Henrique Franco believes that experimentation and testing on animals began as a means to explore functions of the human physiology that could not be discovered by examining a cadaver (Franco, “The History of Vivisection”). I have many issues with this reasoning, the first being that researchers began cutting open animals in search of what was inside of humans.
Secondly, animals were used for this research in tortuous methods. Many were dissected alive in order to view the function of and harvest organs.
Soon testing expanded its waters from small stream laboratories to ocean wide pharmaceutical companies. Once pharmaceuticals began to become more popular, there was a need to know the outcome of the effects the drugs would have when used by humans. There was a tragic trial of the drug thalidomide in the 1950s in which many pregnant women took the pill in order to fight morning sickness (Hajar, “Animal Testing and Medicine”). Hajar notes that because there was no animal testing done on this drug, the effects were not known and as a result, “more than 10,000 children in 46 countries were born with malformations or missing limbs” (“Animal Testing and Medicine”). This is a clear case where testing of pharmaceuticals is
proven to be absolutely necessary before giving them out to the population. The issue of bringing animals into the picture, however, is where I do not agree. Rats and felines, which are usually the first round of animals that pharmaceuticals are tested on, have almost nothing in common with humans. Everything from their heart rates to their levels of creatinine are different from ours. It is true that chimpanzee DNA has been proven to be ninety-nine percent similar to human DNA, however as Dr. Pam Ozenkowski states, “that 1% difference puts the chimpanzee on one side of the glass in the zoo and you on the other” (“Common Sense: Framing the Scientific Argument”).
Although the history, past and present, of animal testing is dark, there is hope on the horizon. There are many confirmed and regulated alternatives that have proven to be successful. The first of these substitutes is the in vitro method. The in vitro testing method involves taking human tissue and cell samples and using them in laboratory cultures and toxicity tests (“Alternatives in Testing”). A breakthrough option under the in vitro testing method is the “organs-on -chips” that were created by the Wyss Institute at Harvard. These chips have been proven to replicate human physiology and responses to drugs and diseases better than animal counterparts (“Organs-on-Chips”). I believe that with the use of these chips there is a great beginning to changing how the research world will work. The usage of animals will hopefully decrease and there will be a more rapid pace and higher percentage of accuracy when it comes to releasing new drugs.
Another method that can be implemented is known as microdosing. Within the realm of microdosing, human volunteers are given a superlatively small, one time dosage of a drug and then undergo imaging to see how the drug interacts with their system (“Alternatives to Testing on Animals”).
As with any alternatives, there are pros and cons that come with each substitute option. Aside from taking animals out of the picture, the upsides of the in vitro method are that it can assess the safety of drugs and chemicals as well as mirror any irritation that would be caused to the skin (“Alternatives to Testing on Animals”). The downsides to this method are that it only focuses on cellular level reactivity and scientists argue that a full body study would still need to be conducted (“Alternatives to Animals”). Microdosing helps weed out drugs that will not work in humans, again, therefore negating any further animal testing on the drug (“Alternatives to Testing on Animals”). However, it only is considered a Phase 0, which is the earliest level of testing, to researchers which means that despite any evidence gathered a drug that proved progressive would have to then be tested on animals for assurance of safety (“Alternatives in Testing”).
4. Ponder
I feel the main issue that I had with this research topic was enthusiasm. I was so motivated to write about something I have been passionate about for so long, that I got lost in my research. I tried to work with too many resources and ended up getting writer’s block just knowing where to begin and end. This is normally and problem I have never had. I hope in
my revisions of this paper to narrow my sources down and to carve off the dead meat of this original draft.
Works Cited
“Alternatives to Testing”. Alternatives. neavs. n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
“Alternatives to Animal Testing”. Animals Used for Experimentation. PETA. n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
“Alternatives to Animals”. Ethics of Medical Research with Animals. Hastings Center Report, 42, no. 6. 2012.
The Hastings Center. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
“Organs-on-Chips”. Organs-on-Chips. Wyss Institute. n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Franco, N. “The History of Vivisection”. Animals in Science. National Antivivisection
Society. 2013. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Franco, N. “Animal Experiments in Biomedical Research: A Historical Perspective”.
animals. NAVS. 2013. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Hajar R. “Animal testing and medicine”. Heart Views. Gulf Heart Association. Volume 12,
Issue 1. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.