Recent figures produced by the Agricultural Department in the USA indicate that, apart from painful experiments, one sample of research institutions revealed that: 24% had major, repeated violation; 22% some major violation; and 29% minor violation of minimum standards of care. Only 24% fully complied with regulations. Advocates of vivisection reform have estimated that perhaps 15% of animal experimentation is necessary (meaning there is no alternative) and proper (meaning following every effort to minimize the suffering, wasteful loss of life, and appropriate choice of animal) for the prevention and cure of disease.
The remaining 70% of animal experimentation can be grouped as follows: (a) regular environmental testing to determine acceptable levels of toxins and other pollutants; (b) military testing of the effects of products designed for chemical and biological warfare, of exposure to radiation, and of other related war hazards (notably those associated with stress); (c) tests concerning human habits, especially drug addiction, and nicotine and alcohol dependency; (d) psychological tests, involving prolonged isolation and exposure to physical and psychological pain, supposedly because of insights of benefit to humans; (e) testing of pharmaceutical products to determine their harmful effects on humans; (f) research undertaken to satisfy scientific curiosity; (g) repetition of earlier experiments to avoid the need to check their published results in the literature; (h) teaching experiments conducted regularly in schools and universities, involving surgery, amputations and use of electrodes.
Animal experiments in the UK have diminished from a peak of 5,607,000 per year in 1971 to 3,112,051 in 1986, most of which were for the testing of pharmaceutical products.
The absolutist position is that the ends do not justify the means. To inflict pain and death on an innocent being is always wrong. Human beings used in experiments which result in their suffering and death is considered morally wrong; similarly, the inflection of suffering on animals cannot be justified by reference to future benefits for human or other animals.
The reformer position is that while some experimentation may be necessary but most are not. Most experiments bring suffering and death to animals with no likelihood of significant benefits. Alternative methods, not involving animals, could replace experiments on animals, such as, the use of tissue cultures. Other methods could be developed.
2. Recent reviews of 10 randomly chosen animal "models" of human disease found little, if any, contribution towards the treatment of patients. The difficulty for researchers is that artificially induced disease in animals is never identical to the naturally arising disorder in people, making animal research a logically flawed process. Although experimenters search for animals species which most closely mimic human responses, a more effective and humane approach would be to concentrate resources on methods of direct relevance to people, such as epidemiology, clinical investigation of patients suffering from the illness, and [in vitro] experiments using human tissues.
2. There are millions of people lying sick, in pain or dying in hospital from diseases that have not yet been cured. There are thousands of millions of people worldwide that are alive because of antibiotics and other treatments developed and tested using laboratory animals. To doubt this shows a total lack of appreciation of the central and fundamental role laboratory animals play in human welfare. There is hardly a life-saving or pain-relieving measure today that has not been largely a result of work with animals. Syphilis, diabetes, and Addison's disease all have effective treatments due to vivisectionist experiments. The introduction of chloroform; the discovery of the circulation of the blood; and the prevention of yellow fever, diphtheria, and smallpox have all resulted from animal experimentation, as have antibiotics, corticosteroids, kidney and liver transplants, cardiac surgery, hip replacements, poliomyelitis vaccine, and cytotoxic drugs for cancer therapy. The hopes for further improvements in the prevention and treatment of conditions such as coronary disease, heart failure, strokes, dementia, arthritis, cancer, cot deaths and AIDS, which cause so much suffering in the world, depend on such work continuing.
3. Today's drug industry cannot continue to develop new medicines without animal experiments, nor can it meet legal requirements on testing without first demonstrating the drugs' safety in animals. Vaccines, for instance, are tested on animals both to gauge potency and to ensure that they will not induce they very disease they are meant to prevent. If animals were not used in such research, it would be necessary to experiment on humans.