Testing on Human Vs Testing on Animals Essay Example

Over the decades, experiments on animals have been conducted by human beings for different reasons. Animal experimentation was invented through curiosity but later came to be a necessity in a search for virus curing medicines and a variety of diseases. Were it not for animals, human beings would be left with an option of testing on self, which would create a global state of moral dilemma, based on what type of a person should be chosen to carry out experiments; a particular class of people or race? The animals often used in research are the monkeys and rats. With a large number of researches conducted on animals, it is shown that some tests on animals predict the human reactions, like the penicillin test which was conducted on mice and managed to protect it from staphylococcal infections, and similarly acted on the humans. However, other tests may fail on some animals, but work on others and humans as well, like the isotretinoin test which causes birth defects worked in the monkeys and rabbits, and human being but failed in rats and mice. Testing in animals may, therefore, give wrong results or give accurate results, and therefore is not an accurate way of testing human drugs, and many tests must be done on various animals and the most accurate result used, since it gives inadequate prediction, not only in human beings, but also on the animals themselves. An animal test should not be relied on as the only way of testing human medicines; scientists should, therefore, come up with a subsequent method to test the final results and reactions of human medicines on the human bodies.

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When conducting animal tests, most of the experiments are not professionally designed, conducted and analyzed, which is one of the reasons why animal tests do not translate to duplications in human trials. Another contributing factor that leads to animal tests not replicating human tests is because the analyses and reviews of proof from the animal tests are not practically adequate. For instance, one study conducted showed that 1/10000 of Medline annals of animal tests were meta-analyses, in comparison with 1/1000 studies of humans (Bracken, 2009).

A paper that was written by Perel, et al., (2007). has been included in James Lind Library, due to its contribution to its methodological contribution in explanation of why human reactions may not be predicted by animal tests. Systematic assessments of the animal tests were conducted by the authors, in relevance to the studies of humans in 6 research areas, where accurate estimations of intrusion impacts were confirmed in methodical analyses of random tests. The studied intrusions were; death of premature babies, reduction of bleeding using anti-fibrinolytic, reduction of death and chance of disability after stroke using tissue plasminogen, reduction of lung morbidity using antenatal corticosteroids, corticosteroids used for head injury, and tirilazad used for ischaemic stroke. Three of these studies showed discordancy in the animal and human tests; and in the other three, there were similar results. In all of the researches, major methodological disadvantages of animal tests proof of huge publication bias were noticeable.

In the research for stroke cure, a systematic review of animal studies has been broadly done, but no human drug cures that have been made yet, despite the centuries of research. In a methodical analysis of the FK506, 29 animal tests were conducted and only one test blinded the researchers to intrusion, and two experiments blinded the viewers during the valuation of the results. Out of the 29 tests, none met all the 10 quality standards applied by the assessors. A meta-analysis of tests showed a sturdy drift for the systematically weak researches to illustrate the strong defensive effects and the systematically sturdiest tests to show the absence or weak defensive effects (Macleod, Horky, O'Collins, Donnan, & Howells, 2005).

The methodology reviews that have been done on animal tests have pointed the poor quality of the animal research and how it is difficult to extrapolate it to humans, which has been a concern that is increasingly being made in the other fields of drugs making and analysis. Matthews, (2008), has come up with a challenge on the claim that almost all the medical achievements since the last century depended on test with animals, directly or indirectly, to give evidence that justifies the assertions.

The key problems related to animal tests that Pound et al., (2004) summarized on include:

• Variability in the follow-up duration, which may vary with the disease dormancy in human.
• Nuances in the testing laboratories which may affect the results, like the blinding researchers' methods being not recognized or testified.
• The range of the results methods, being alternatives or originators of the diseases, are of undefined significance to the human clinical condition.
• Different models for induction of illness, with different similarity to the conditions of the human.
• Dissimilar species of animals and strains, with various metabolic trails and drug metabolites, leading to different toxicity and effectiveness.

Conclusion

Animal tests on human drugs will, therefore, be more valid in the prediction of reactions of humans on exposure and treatment, if a substantial development in their scientific and a more methodological analysis of animal literature as it changes is conducted. Right drug dosage, right timing and the important aspects of drug regime will also improve the accuracy of animal's tests on human drug tests.

References

Bracken, M. B. (2009). Why animal studies are often poor predictors of human reactions to exposure. Journal of the royal society of medicine, 102(3), 120-122. https://doi.org/10.1258%2Fjrsm.2008.08k033

Macleod, M. R., Horky, L. L., O'Collins, T., Donnan, G. A., & Howells, D. W. (2005). Systematic review and meta-analysis of the efficacy of FK506 in experimental stroke. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 25(6), 713-721. https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fsj.jcbfm.9600064

Matthews, R. A. (2008). Medical progress depends on animal models-doesn't it? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 101(2), 95-98. https://doi.org/10.1258%2Fjrsm.2007.070164

Perel, P., Roberts, I., Sena, E., Wheble, P., Briscoe, C., Sandercock, P., ... & Khan, K. S. (2007). Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: a systematic review. BMJ, 334(7586), 197. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39048.407928.BE

Pound, P., Ebrahim, S., & Sandercock, P. (2004). Reviewing Animal Trials Systematically (RATS) Group. Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? BMJ, 328, 514-517. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.328.7438.514