As I sit on the couch with my dog resting on my lap, I feel a profound sense of cognitive dissonance. I would be devastated if he were mistreated or harmed, and yet in laboratories around the world, millions of these animals are subjected to pain to ensure human safety. I’ve often wondered why our “greater good” necessitates their suffering. It is time we transition away from animal testing toward more humane, accurate technologies.
The primary reasons testing should be banned are ethics and efficacy. Animals, while being sentient and having the capacity for suffering, are not able to give their consent for testing the way humans do. This makes their involuntary use nearly impossible to justify. Scientifically, the “gold standard” of using animal models is aging. According to a journal about the translatability of animal research to humans, over 92% of the time, substances that pass animal trials fail in human clinical trials; this is because our biology isn’t identical. Today, we have alternatives like organs-on-a-chip and sophisticated computer modeling — where, according to the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, complex software and algorithms simulate the human body’s processes and predict the body’s reactions to certain chemicals — that often provide more relevant data than a mouse or rabbit ever could.
Proponents of testing argue that a living body is an incredibly complex system where organs interact in ways a computer cannot yet simulate. They contend that testing a drug on a single cell won’t reveal if it causes a heart arrhythmia in a whole organism. To these researchers, the current choice is a grim one: risk animal subjects today, or risk human patients tomorrow.
However, this “human vs. animal” framing is a false dichotomy. The argument that we must use animals to save humans ignores the fact that animal testing can actually be dangerous by giving us a “false sense of security.” According to Cruelty Free International, one drug used to treat arthritis, called Vioxx, was tested on monkeys and several other animal species, and yet it has caused 140,000 deaths and 320,000 strokes and heart attacks worldwide. On the other hand, aspirin, found everywhere, is toxic to many animals and would not be sold if it had followed current animal testing standards. If a drug works on animals but is toxic to humans, or conversely works on humans but is toxic to animals, the animal testing didn’t save us — it misled us. Furthermore, the massive funding currently used for untrustworthy animal research should be redirected to the non-animal alternatives, which have a 90% accuracy rate according to an article from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. We aren’t choosing between safety and ethics; we are choosing between 20th-century habits and 21st-century innovation.
We must move beyond the “necessary evil” mindset. By increasing funding for alternatives, we can phase out the inhumane practices of animal testing. We owe it to the animals — and to our own scientific integrity — to find a better way.
