Some people claim that it is immoral to exploit animals, and that the government should prohibit using animals for scientific research. In the meantime, others argue that exploiting animals is crucial for allowing scientists to learn more about human biology and health. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

A moral dilemma exists in biomedical

research

relating to the use of animals for conducting scientific experiments.

As a result

, animal activists advocate that governments should ban

such

practices whereas, I along with other scientists opine that animal testing is vital for the development of new medicines and to test the safety of clinical products. On the surface, animal rights campaigners argue that animal testing is inhumane and the majority of

such

experiments do not contribute towards improving the health of humans.

In other words

, diseases that are artificially induced in animals in laboratories, whether they be on mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings.

For example

, an article published in New York Times in 1998 reported the discovery of two chemicals by a Boston researcher that cured cancer in mice but failed to work in humans.

This

is because animal species differ from each other.

Furthermore

, there are alternatives to animal testing

such

as

research

on human volunteers, sophisticated computational methods, in-vitro studies on human cells, etcetera that might be crucial for the advancement of medicine.

On the other hand

, animal experiments are unavoidable to make the necessary progress in medical

research

. It aims to contribute to the development of new methods to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases. In order to achieve

this

, animal models will help in gaining an understanding of the human body in health and sickness. To illustrate

this

, the recent development of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine, proven to have 95 per cent efficacy in people, underwent preclinical trials in mice to observe the immune response generated by the vaccine against the coronavirus.

Additionally

,

this

technique will give insight into the long- and short-term effects of medicine before administering them to the human population. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that exploiting animals for scientific purposes is inhumane.

However

, I believe banning

such

methodology in clinical

research

can derail the future of medicine.