This is a very difficult topic because it is an opinionated debate between necessity versus ethics. And it appears from the majority of the feedback from our classmates, animal testing is bottom line unethical, but is necessary to an extent to continue the advancements in medical science. Testing on animals is cruel and essentially is the researcher taking control of the animal’s purpose of life, where to give perspective, more than 115 million animals worldwide are used in experimentation in the biomedical industry. Yet the animal testing that has occurred in just the past decade has allowed for advancements in the medical industry that provides a better quality and longevity of life for not only humans, but animals as well.

Throughout history as regulations continue to get more stringent, researchers are becoming more conscious of limiting pre-clinical testing as needed, by either eliminating the need for whole-animal testing when it isn’t necessary or reducing the sample size used for specific tests. I agree with BijinV’s perspective that as technology advances in developing more sophisticated modeling softwares, renewable cell lines, and ex-vivo models, the frequency of animal testing will decrease, but will never fully be non-existent. Computer models cannot fully replace animal research due to their inability to understand the complex interactions between molecules, cells, organs, organisms, and the environment. There are too many parameters and even biochemical unknowns that cannot be predicted for in a computer model that could be seen in animal research. As smitshah mentioned, the biochemical prospective is still a mystery to us, varying between species and between each non-human and human animal. Animal experimentation provides insight on these interactions and is ultimately necessary in grasping the complexity of a computer model that would be required to ensure every parameter is accounted for in a research study.