Animal Experimentation 101
There are two issues in the Animal Experimentation debate:
- It is moral (or not)
- It is essential for medical research (or not)
If you’re talking to someone who believes we have special, superior status among the animals on Earth, the argument is over. If we are the boss of everyone, we can do as we please. Anything done to further the human cause is legitimate.
As for whether it is essential, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Though the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the Humane Society, stopanimaltest.com, and of course, PETA, have great factsheets, I like this document, which is awesome in its thoroughness. Plus, it’s very rational, and I’m a big fan of being rational.
The upshot is that animal experimentation is a multi-billion dollar a year business, and it involves a complex web consisting of:
- funders
- researchers
- pharmaceutical companies
- private companies that do fabulously-valuable work like breed dogs that are easy to experiment on, and of course,
- YOUR tax dollars.
A lot of people stand to lose a lot of funds if animal experimentation continues to be replaced with less expensive, more effective models that take less time to achieve results. Make no mistake: this is an issue of economics.
