Animal Research PA School essays

Animal Research PA School essays Today in the age of fast, efficient computer technology is there still a need for the animal testing methods used hundreds of years ago? Many scientist and doctors, including Nobel Prize winners, say yes, because it is the only way to view what happens to a whole living body without risking any harm to humans. Banning animal testing would only cause the number of humans dying from drug interactions to increase, since human safety would be sacrificed for the animals sake, is the belief of many researchers (Understanding). Yet, in the past thirty years there has been a growing number of animal rights organizations, and also more conservative institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Universities, which have banned testing on animals. These medical schools are speaking out on the benefits of using alternatives to animal labs and recommending alternatives animal testing to be instituted elsewhere (People). These groups are establishing the belief that there are humane alternati ves to animal testing. Greeks and Romans are the first known people to conduct animal studies. A famous early animal experimenter was Galen, a Greek anatomist and physician. Early animal experimentations were primitive, by our standards today. For instance, from his research of over fifty different species, Aristotle concluded that the heart was the center of the nervous system (McCoy, 15). As time progressed, it became taboo to test on either humans or animals. People in the thirteenth-century believed that they had no right to intervene with diseases, which were understood to be Gods wrath. The clergy said anyone, man or beast, who had a disease must let His will be done. This world view caused priests to oppose all scientific experimentation including vivisection of animals and humans. When the church made it illegal and punishable by death if anyone dissected a cadaver, the church and the scientific...