Animal testing is not ethical ... ever. Following that same thought process, however, neither is digging up the ground to place buildings there instead. Causing air pollution by driving a car is also unethical yet millions of people do it every day. The point I'm making is that with technological advancements, there will also unavoidably be downsides. In the case of medical devices, that downside is animal testing. Even if a computer simulation built to mimic the human anatomy was created, a test in something alive will be needed. For now, barring humans volunteering to replace the animals in the animal testing phase, animal testing is the best we have. Hopefully, in the future, this is not the case.

Animal testing helps the researchers and scientists to have improved medicines and treatments which helps in various diseases. It is important for improving the health of the human beings it also helps the safety of the drugs that human being consumed. I think that animal testing is unethical as animals undergoes lot of pain. There are tests done on animals which are never used to produce any medicines, so it goes waste, but it ultimately harms the animals. Testing on animals is costly as the animals need to be fed and treated before undergoing any experiments. There should be other technology experiments are conducted on artificial system where there is no harm to the animals. Animal testing helps human beings to have a safe life. Medicines should be natural so that even if it is tested on animals it not causes any harm to them.

While very unfortunate, animal testing is critical in developing medical devices for humans. If someone in a medical device-related field is completely against animal testing, they might be in the wrong business. The alternative would be to not have animal studies and go straight to human studies, which would be even more detrimental. However, if there are other options available where in vitro testing would be enough to satisfy the research (using cells to test a device or material), then that path should be taken. This option does limit what you can test for.

It is, however, important to remember that even with animal testing, there are certain ethical guidelines that must be followed. If any animal related research deviates from these outlined procedures, then it is, of course, unethical.

As technology progresses, animal studies will be phased out more and more in favor of computer simulations. Currently however, animal studies are needed because there is no alternative. There are steps humans can take to reduce the ethical issues presented by using animals, but I do not believe an animal study can truly be ethically clean. For that to happen, you would need informed consent of the animal, which we cannot do. Computer simulations are powerful enough at the moment to complete non-biological simulations and some simple biological simulations (for instance Dr. Roman is using FEA to predict aneurysms). But until computers are powerful enough to hold the complexity of an organ and humans understand the organ enough to program it in, the most we can hope for is to minimize the ethical issues of animal research with the use of numbing agents, positive social interaction, and humane sacrificing methods. As it stands currently, it is our only option.

Animals have always been very useful in the name of science. We have developed vaccines, medications, and medical devices to make our way of life as well as other animals’ lives safer and easier. If we didn’t test on animals, it would mean that we would have to have volunteered humans to test these products which would result in more people dying. Even when we test certain products on animals, there is still a chance where humans could reject the products and it could hurt us in the end as well. Working on animals does not mean it could work on humans even if some animals have similar physiological and genetic behavior. Humans can still react differently to these products because humans are still different than other animals. Also, there are some animals that are bred just for animal testing. These animals are grown a certain way and for a certain period of time to be used for product testing. They are to be treated properly and respectfully.

I do believe working on animals is unethical but in the future, technology will be so advanced that animal testing will be used a lot less. I do not think that animal testing will be fully gone but the less animal testing there is the better if there are other options. Currently there are medical devices and products that could be used alternatively than animal testing. There was an instance where there was a human breathing lung on a chip which replicated the functions of a human lung. However, this lung on a chip was used on a mouse to see if the lung would work. Also, Physicians at University of Rochester had 3D printed organs which are used by medical students to practice surgery. These organs have the ability to bleed when cut like an actual organ. This wasn’t available before and because of technology this is capable. Advancements like these would be a better alternative than working on animals.

In my views animal testing is unethical but we can also say that technology can't give us final results we have to depend on animal testing. Though Necessity does not mean it is ethical. During animal testing numerous animals are killed and other who stay alive live their life in captivity. Even sometimes some tests are done that won't be practically used or are no benefit to humans, so they gave their life in vain. Even if we think practically animal testing is really expensive. It occurs more than once over the years o the costs adds on. Lastly there is also a point that reaction of drug in animals is different sometimes than humans. So the drugs won't react the same way in natural environment further weakens the point of animal testing.

If we talk about the alternative way, this alternate methods does not stimulate humans in the same way. Researchers do not recognise the limitation but it is thought that animals are the closest match to humans so according to me for there is no alternative way.

From my personal views I believe that animal testing is necessary for scientific research especially in medical devices, where the devices will be implanted on humans. At this time there is no simulation that can show how the medical device will truly behave in an individual so there must be an alternate form of testing that can prove that a device is safe for human use. Although I think animal testing is unethical to breed animals in cages only for the sole purpose of using them for science where they will inevitably die, it is a necessary evil at this time in order to secure the safety of human beings who will later on use the device. I think that all medical companies and research projects should be forced to follow the Good Laboratory Practices, as to ensure that animals are to be treated in the most humane way possible. I also think that in circumstances where controls can be erased from the experiment due to past research, they should be in order to minimize the sacrificing of animals for science. I think more regulations should be put in place such as a limit to the number of animals that can be sacrificed for a study and to the conditions that they will be kept in. Animal studies are necessary and can provide valuable insight, and they must be done because very few if any individuals will sign up to test a new device that has not been proven safe for use before. Alternatives would be advanced computer simulations that can mimic human body interactions and reactions with the devices. However, I do not believe these will be accurate enough for quite some time.

I believe that animal testing for medical purposes is ethical. This is partially based on the utilitarian argument in ethics. Utilitarianism states that the most ethical choice is one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Yet this is limited because you may test a drug on an animal and the outcome is that your drug doesn't work. So you harmed an animal for no ultimate purpose. However the results can't be predicted, thus animal testing is done in the hopes that greater good will be the result of your drug. Of course, special care must be given to the animal and it must be treated well. Also, when possible it is best to use the least complex animals for testing (such as the c.elegans worm).

It is unethical to perform animal testing however that is the optimum way as test subject to gain knowledge about potential human treatments. Animal study and experimentation can be very useful for advancing medical science. One should learn but keep the ethics in mind and prevent unnecessary abuse, pain and suffering to the animal. If it is wrong to inflict pain to a human being, it should be wrong to inflict pain to the animal. If alternate methods can produce valid results, they should be used instead of animal experimentation. If animal testing is required, experiments should be made as humane as possible.

It's sad that animals have to be sacrificed in order to try and test the safety and efficacy of drugs and biomedical devices but it seems that it's the only option at the moment. Animal studies provide valuable information to research scientists as to whether a product can make it to clinical trials or not i.e. if an adverse effect is observed on an animal model after implantation of a device, it won't be tested on humans.

I've read somewhere that there is a company that develops microchips that can mimic different organs in the body. They were initially intended to study the link between drugs and the effects they have on organs but apparently FDA thinks that they can also be used to determine the safety of products. This might potentially be an alternative and maybe even put an end to animal testing one day for good.

I understand as to why testing animals is unethical. But at the moment it is the only option that has been successful. If there were other options I feel like they would have been used already. If there is an alternative to testing on animals we just need to do our research into finding out what exactly that is. Maybe there are some companies now a days that do not actually test on animals.

I believe animal testing is ethical for medical advancement instead of testing it on human beings. We came out with all these new medications that help people because before we try it on human being we tested them on animals and that helps to not to threaten other people’s life without a guarantee that it will cure them. However, I believe that it’s crucial on the same time that we sacrifice a lot of animals, but on the same time, it’s for humans good. So, I believe that this topic is depatable , a lot of people believe it’s unethical. However, personally I believe that we left with no other choice, instead of sacrificing people and put people’s life in danger for trying a medication on them; without animal testing a lot of people might have been suffering from diseases that we now able to Cure them by medications. So, since animal testing is required, we just need to test them as human as possible, instead of killing many animals.

Most would agree that animal testing is indeed unethical, the real question should be: to what extent can we reduce the unethical treatment towards animal models in order to produce a viable medical device? The method of euthanasia for example, is done in a way that is as most pain-free as possible (i.e. IV anaesthetics, controlled-atmosphere killing) which is at least more ethical than using more conventional methods. It is a fact that biotech companies nowadays are attempting to transition away from animal testing, but not likely for ethical reasons, more for the acquisition of accurate data. Since animals are a different species from humans, their biological responses to pre-clinical treatments can differ from an actual patient. This can be concerning when coming up with the design for a new drug or device that is administered to human patients. I mentioned in another forum that Loreal tests their lotion-based products on tissue engineered human skin, or cadaverous skin taken from an organ donor to attain more precise results. The limitation to doing this however, is that it is not as cost-effective as using animals since more processing has to go into preparing the human skin for it to behave as if it were alive. Since we kill animals for food and sport in ways that do not resemble euthanasia whatsoever, I think animal testing is acceptable when attempting to synthesize a life-saving product with no other alternative. Simply put, if you want to make an omelete, you have to break some eggs.

I believe that animal testing is a necessary evil. I worked in academic research where I studied traumatic brain injury. Whilst I worked with models that I made, some people in the lab worked with rats to study the effects of blast trauma on brain tissue. As much as we do not want to do it, it is a necessity because we cannot study on humans. But for the experiments, the rats were sedated, tested, and then euthanized. Many precautions were taken to make sure the rats did not suffer. Their brains were studied to see what damage had been done to them. This is important because it allows us to understand the damage done by blasts so that we can better understand how we can treat them. We are many years away from an accurate model that will be able to show us the body's response to these blast injuries so for now we must make to with what we have. Hopefully one day we will be able to not test on rats.

I would like to pitch in on that idea. In my opinion, I do not believe that even with "99.9% certainty" from computers will humans still find it necessary to use animals for testing. In addition, if we take a look back throughout the years, we can see the ethical changes we've made towards scientific experimentation that disagree with the idea that we want assurance at the cost of others. We've established laws that have limited and abolished certain testings on both human and animal subjects. Increase in consideration of the amount of harm a certain experiment may inflict on a subject, weighing the risks and benefits of a test, prioritizing the subjects' health throughout an experiment, and completely illegalizing the use of many animals are only a few of the many changes we've made in the past to adhere to a higher standard of ethical scientific experimentation. Many of these decisions have been made not only because we strive to learn from past mistakes and cruelty, but also because the advancement in technology and techniques have allowed us to establish limitations while still improving healthcare. We can certainly assume that advancements in virtual simulations will play a key role in minimizing the use of animal testings and looking at our history, I would go as far to say that we will reach a point when virtual simulations will be faster and more accurate than animal testing when it comes to developing medical treatments and devices for humans and the use of any form of animal testings will be banned. At the very least, until we reach such a point, future technology will undoubtedly help develop medical solutions to give us enough certainty that animal and human testings will yield much less harm, discomfort, and deaths.

Sources:
Timeline of human trial laws: https://history.nih.gov/about/timelines_laws_human.html
Timeline of animal trial laws: https://history.nih.gov/about/timelines_laws_animal.html