Regulating the Animal Testing Industry

Abstract

Animal testing has been a customary practice in numerous civilizations throughout human history. Humanity tends to want to understand the true nature of our physiology as a whole, and animals have been beneficial to help satisfy this curiosity. Yet ethically speaking, scientists argue for the protection of the rights of humans, while many fail to do so for our natural counterparts, animals. Current standards of the industry bring up concern for the ethical treatment of animals; additionally, many of the standards that exist are outdated and not systematized throughout the scientific world. Furthermore, new scientific developments can possibly allow for the phasing out entirely of animal testing, with new computer modeling software. It can render many of the existing tests obsolete as this new software allows scientists to bypass some of the animal testing in drug trials. Due to many of the shortcomings in the industry, this has caused an inefficiency. This inefficiency can be described as an overall loss of time and money, which could instead be put towards developing new drugs or other studies. Although it is unlikely that animal testing will be removed entirely, it is necessary that new standards be put in place for the ethical treatment of animals.

Keywords: animal testing, ethics, regulation, drug trials, computer modeling