Animals Used for Experimentation FAQs

“Isn’t animal testing responsible for every major medical advance?”

Medical historians have shown that improved nutrition and sanitation standards and other behavioral and environmental factors—rather than knowledge gained from animal experiments—are responsible for the decreasing number of deaths from common infectious diseases since 1900 and that medicine has had little to do with increased life expectancy. Many of the most important advances in the field of health care can be attributed to human studies, which have led to major medical breakthroughs, such as the development of anesthesia, the stethoscope, morphine, radium, penicillin, artificial respiration, x-rays, antiseptics, and CAT, MRI, and PET scans; the study of bacteriology and germ theory; the discovery of the link between cholesterol and heart disease and the link between smoking and cancer; and the isolation of the virus that causes AIDS. Animal testing played no role in these or many other important medical developments.

Visit StopAnimalTests.com to learn more about animal testing and its alternatives.

“But weren’t animals used to develop many of the important treatments that we use today, such as the polio vaccine?”

In fact, two separate bodies of work were done on polio: the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and did not involve animals, and the animal tests, in which a staggering number of animals were killed. Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg noted that for 40 years, experiments on monkeys who had been infected with polio generated “limited progress” toward a cure. The breakthrough came when scientists learned how to grow the virus from human and monkey cells.

Certainly, some medical developments were the result of cruel animal tests, but that does not mean that the developments would not have been possible without animal testing or that the primitive techniques used in the 1800s are still valid today. It’s impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading results with regard to human health, we’d probably be better off if we hadn’t relied on animal testing for so long.

Read more about the humane alternatives to animal testing.

“Don't scientists have a responsibility to use animals in order to find cures for human diseases?”

Educating people and encouraging them to avoid fat and cholesterol, quit smoking, reduce alcohol and other drug consumption, exercise regularly, and clean up the environment will save more human lives and prevent more human suffering than all the animal tests in the world. Animal tests are primitive, and modern technology and human clinical tests are much more effective and reliable.

Even if we had no alternative to using animals, which is not the case, animal testing would still be ethically unacceptable. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilized behaviour.” After all, there are probably some medical problems that can only be cured by testing on unwilling humans, but we don’t conduct such tests because we recognize that it would be wrong to do so.

Watch footage from PETA’s groundbreaking investigation of a primate lab in Maryland.

“If we didn’t use animals, wouldn’t we have to test new drugs on people?”

The choice isn’t between animals and people. There is no guarantee that drugs are safe—even if they have been tested on animals—because the physiological differences between humans and other animals prevent the results of animal tests from being accurately extrapolated to humans. Some drugs that have been approved through animal tests can cause serious and unexpected side effects for humans. A 2002 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in the last 25 years, more than 50 FDA-approved drugs had to be taken off the market or relabeled because they caused “adverse reactions.” In 2000 alone, the prescription drugs removed from the market were the popular heartburn drug Propulsid (removed because it caused “fatal heart rhythm abnormalities”), the diabetes drug Rezulin (“removed after causing liver failure”), and the irritable-bowel-syndrome treatment Lotronex (“removed for causing fatal constipation and colitis”). According to the study’s lead author, “Millions of patients are exposed to potentially unsafe drugs each year.”

If the pharmaceutical industry switched from animal experiments to quantum pharmacology and in vitro tests, we would be better protected from harmful drugs, not less protected.

Read about how animal tests have hurt our progress in the fight against cancer.

“If we didn’t test on animals, how would we conduct medical research?”

Human clinical and epidemiological studies, studies on cadavers, and computer simulations are faster, more reliable, less expensive, and more humane than animal tests. Ingenious scientists have used human brain cells to develop a model “microbrain” that can be used to study tumors and have also come up with artificial skin and bone marrow. Instead of killing animals, we can now test irritancy on egg membranes, produce vaccines from cell cultures, and perform pregnancy tests using blood samples. As Gordon Baxter, cofounder of Pharmagene Laboratories—a company that uses only human tissue and computers to develop and test its drugs—says, “If you have information on human genes, what’s the point of going back to animals?”

Take a virtual tour of a real research lab.

“Doesn't animal experimentation help animals by advancing veterinary science?”

The point is not whether animal experimentation can be useful to animals or humans; the point is that we do not have the moral right to inflict unnecessary suffering on those who are at our mercy. Saying that it’s acceptable to experiment on animals to advance veterinary science is like saying that it’s acceptable to experiment on poor children to benefit rich ones.

Read more about the use of animals in medical and veterinary schools.

“Don’t medical students have to dissect animals?”

No, they don’t. In fact, more and more medical students are becoming conscientious objectors who choose to learn by assisting experienced surgeons instead of by using animals. In Great Britain, it is against the law for medical students to practice surgery on animals, and British physicians are just as competent as those who were educated elsewhere. Many of the leading U.S. medical schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, now use innovative, clinical teaching methods instead of cruel animal laboratories. Harvard, for instance, offers a cardiac-anesthesia practicum in which students observe human heart bypass operations instead of performing terminal surgery on dogs. The Harvard staff members who developed this practicum have recommended that it be implemented elsewhere.

Find out about alternatives to animal testing at medical schools.

“Should we throw out all the drugs that were developed and tested on animals? Would you refuse to take them?”

Unfortunately, a number of things in our society came about through the exploitation of others. For instance, many of the roads that we drive on were built by slaves. We can’t change the past; those who have already suffered and died are lost. But what we can do is change the future by using non-animal research methods from now on.

Read about the powerful institutions that perpetuate animal experiments.

“Doesn't the law protect animals from cruelty?”

There is no law in the U.S. that prohibits any animal experiment, no matter how frivolous or painful. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is very weak and poorly enforced, and it does not protect rats and mice (the most common victims of animal experiments), cold-blooded animals, birds, or animals who are traditionally used for food. It is basically a housekeeping act that does not prohibit any type of animal experimentation. Under the AWA, animals can be starved, electrically shocked, driven insane, or burned with a blowtorch—as long as it’s done in a clean laboratory.

Watch undercover video of a primate lab at Columbia University.

“Don't scientists care about the animals they experiment on? Doesn't their research depend on the animals’ well-being?”

Investigations at even the most prestigious institutions show that this is simply not the case. At the City of Hope in California, one of the country’s most prominent research facilities, animals starved to death and drowned in their own feces. Many experimenters become calloused after years of research and don’t see the animals’ suffering. They treat animals like disposable tools and consider proper animal care to be too expensive.

Watch footage from an undercover investigation of labs at the University of North Carolina.

“Don't peer-review and animal-care committees prevent animal cruelty at institutions?”

No, because many such committees are composed mainly or completely of people who have vested interests in the continuation of animal experimentation. Members of the public were not allowed access to committee meetings until lawsuits were filed.

“Cats and dogs are killed in pounds anyway, so why not let them be used in experiments to save lives?”

A painless death at an animal shelter is a far cry from a life of severe pain and deprivation and an agonizing death in a laboratory.

Watch footage of cats and kittens in deafness studies.

“Would you support an experiment that would sacrifice 10 animals to save 10,000 people?”

No. Look at it another way: Suppose that the only way to save 10,000 people was to experiment on one mentally challenged orphan. If saving people is the goal, wouldn’t that be worth it? Most people would agree that it would be wrong to sacrifice one human for the “greater good” of others because it would violate that individual’s rights, but when it comes to sacrificing animals, the assumption is that human beings have rights and animals do not. Yet there is no logical reason to deny animals the same rights that protect individual humans from being sacrificed for the common good.

“What about experiments in which animals are observed and not harmed?”
If there really is no harm, we don’t object. But “no harm” means that animals aren’t isolated in barren, cold steel cages because even confinement causes stress and fear, as shown by the differences in blood pressure between caged and free animals. Caged animals also suffer because they are prevented from performing their normal behaviors and social interactions.

Watch footage from inside a laboratory that tests Iams pet food.

“If you were in a fire and could save either your child or your dog, who would you choose?”

I would save my child, but that’s just instinct. A dog would save her pup. Regardless, my choice proves nothing about the moral legitimacy of animal experiments. I might save my own child instead of my neighbor’s, but that hardly proves that experimentation on my neighbor’s child is acceptable.

“Why Should Animals Have Rights?”

Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. For more information, click here.