Animal Testing

[wonderwiccan]

Products that were tested on animals are unethical, right? It seems clear to me only in the obvious cases. But I get confused the more obscure the example is. There are companies that don't test on animals, for either individual ingredients or the finished product. However, what if they are using products that they know are safe specifically

Comments

[turnyourback]

actually, i'm pretty sure pencillin wasn't tested on animals.

[turnyourback]

Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, was delayed for more than 10 years by misleading results from experiments in rabbits, and would have been shelved forever had it been tested on guinea pigs, which it kills. Sir Alexander Fleming himself said: ‘How fortunate we didn’t have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably never have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.’
http://www.theecologist.org/current_issue/animal_testing.htm

[xchristinax]

ANY medicine that is FDA-approved is tested on animals.

[ushitomo]

Penicillin was discovered before this went into effect, then grandfathered. To many of the animals used in testing these days, it's a deadly poison. Though I guess any new medication that contains penicillin would have to be tested.

[scraatch]

"Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, was delayed for more than 10 years by misleading results from experiments in rabbits"

Looks to me like it WAS tested on animals?

[ushitomo]

and look how that turned out. Let me clarify: Penicillin did not have to pass FDA regulations which were not yet in place, and was not put on the market as a result of animal testing.

[scraatch]

No one said it's a perfect system - there is no perfect system. Occasionally there will be problems, but overall you save many human lives by using medicines that have at least been TRIED before. We are quite similar to animals, especially rats. testing on rats is not perfect - but it's a hell of a lot better than not testing.

[ushitomo]

If penicillin had had to go through modern FDA regulations, it would never have made it to clinical testing, and we'd be a hell of a lot worse off than we are now (ie, in comparison to our current standards, we "need" something that animal testing would have prevented us from having).

Furthermore, positive results in animal tests provide us with the security to go straight into clinical testing, when sometimes the difference in physiology has the reverse effect: Showing a dangerous substance to be safe for us, simply because it doesn't harm another species. Someone already posted this article (which sums a few actual cases), but it's worth linking to again: http://www.theecologist.org/current_issue/animal_testing.htm

[scraatch]

Yep, nothing is perfect, but more often than not the results are very valueable, so it's worth it.

[ushitomo]

Would it be worth it had modern FDA regulations been around when penicillin was discovered? Would it be worth it if penicillin had been deemed too dangerous for human consumption and countless people had died or been maimed due to infections that we now treat without much thought? Would it still be worth it if there was some other amazingly useful substance out there that we've discounted because of animal trials?

Is it truly be worth it, when the results that were indeed valuable could have been arrived at just as easily without animal testing, when models comparable to the human system - including living human tissues (though many in vitro cultures also use nonhuman tissues) - are available?

[scraatch]

Animal testing, as I've said numerous times, is not perfect, but it is effective, which is why it's used. We're not to unlike animals physically, especially monkies and rats. There will be times with animal testing fails. There will be incredibly more times when it's very valuable for showing effectiveness and side effects.

I don't doubt that alternate testing means are valuable, but nothing can replace a test on a real living animal. I believe we should be doing as much as possible to advance medical knowledge.. and this means taking all the methods we have at our disposal. To not do so is incredibly irresponsible and causes unnecessary human death. What if one of these deaths is your mother, or baby? Would you sacrifice your baby to save a bunny?

[savestheworld]

true that.