Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Animal Experimentation Does Not Work

(Link to article)

From the Huffington Post, an article explains why animal experimentation does not work. The author of this article, Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist and public health specialist, makes it clear that she is against animal testing. Akhtar describes the way stressed animals in testing laboratories react when they are in unfamiliar and seemingly dangerous environments away from their natural habitats. She believes it is wrong to put animals under stressful conditions and make them suffer through painful procedures just so researchers can collect data from the experiments. Akhtar goes on and explains that because the animals are placed under stress in the experiments, it affects the research results and does not reflect their actual behaviors in certain circumstances.

Not only does animal experimentation hurt animals, it also hurts humans. Since experiment results do not yield the correct data because stressful animals are in suffocating rooms and cages that alter their responses to experimental interactions, some people might just assume the lab animals naturally react that way. This leads to false assumptions that people will continue to believe and problems that they may not be able to resolve.

Those who wish to continue to experiment on animals under harmful environments probably just see animals as bodily objects that can provide "useful" data for people to reference for their own benefits. According to Descartes, the body and mind are completely distinct from one another. So in this case, supporters of animal testing would believe that animals' bodies are separate from the mind. They would see animals as not having the power to think for themselves, so it is ethical to experiment on them. Unlike humans who use the mind to use the body, animals exist with just their bodies, allowing humans as the more superior species to have the right to use animals for their own needs.

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