Should animals be used for medical research?

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Animals and medical research Animal research for human medical purposes is a argumentative issue in the medical field as it involves animal rights, with debates raging for and against the use of laboratory animals. However, animal research has been there for a long time as it leads to improvement in living standards and life expectancy. The benefits of drugs can be fully appreciated when people acknowledge the role of animals in enhancing medical research and also leading to the discovery of various medical solutions. In order to test the safety of medications, animals are the best alternatives since human volunteers are hard to find. Thus, the use of animals reduces likely health risks on humans during the experimentation process. This paper supports the use of animal research for medical purposes since it is more beneficial than the costs involved. Other than facilitating medical experiments, animal research helps to curb uncontrolled overpopulation of animals especially mice and monkeys. Animal overpopulation could have a detrimental effect on the environment or to human beings. Thus, animal research is useful in the medical world especially in the discovery of medicines. Additionally, overpopulation of mice might lead to spread of diseases like plague, and have also been involved in the spread of numerous epidemics. Monkeys can be a menace in the human wildlife conflict sometimes due to proximity to human settlements. Animal research is a way to reduce their overpopulation as opposed to merely killing them. Another reason on why to carry on with animal research is that, human beings kill some of the animals for food. Even though obtaining food is a basic need in the life of humans, in most cases forgoing this in favor of research is beneficial to more people. In any case, human beings obtain food from a variety of sources and food obtained from animals is not the major source of nutrition. Animal research is also valuable to the animals as they can also be treated upon the discovery of various drugs. In animal testing the population of animals is controlled by considering the impact on the ecosystem, while animal killing for food ignores impact on the environment, there are also rules that prevent animal cruelty during research. The reliance on animal testing is justifiable on the grounds that the animals are mammals, with similar anatomy and functions to those of human beings, the reaction of diseases like cancer are similar. Animal research is a vital step in the scientific process from where great discoveries have been made. These would not have been possible if body functions of animals were remarkably different thus, scientific research mostly utilizes monkeys and white mice. The basic functions of animals in reproduction, movement, breathing and even seeing is similar to those of human beings additionally, an understanding of animal...