10 Argumentative Topics on Animal Experimentation for a Debate

If you’re looking for arguments against animal experimentation, you’ve come to the right place. While most articles will take on the animal cruelty argument, we are going to assist you even further. Animal experimentation is not just cruel, it’s also ineffective. The data accumulated from these tests has been proven to be inconclusive.

This guide is full of actual facts and figures, ones which will help you perform a dominating and impressive debate. Here are 10 facts on animal experimentation for an interesting and winning debate.

1. Around 130 million animals go through experimental research every year throughout the world, these numbers are considered to be conservative because they are the ones which are recorded. Animal cruelty has raised a lot of public awareness in the last 50 years. It’s now a common consensus in the research community that there is no such thing as “Humane Animal Research”.
2. Contrary to popular belief, a century of experimenting on animals has yielded little or no result that’s been useful to the human medical condition. Though 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines have shown successful results in nonhuman primate research, over 200 vaccine trials have failed to demonstrate any benefits to humans since 2008. Cures for diabetes, which were taken from animal experimentation have failed hopelessly. The mouse diabetes model which scientists have been researching on for decades has been officially discredited.
3. Research on animal models for traumatic brain injury and regeneration in neurological diseases has also been deemed inconclusive and useless. Scientists have tried randomizing at least 10 controlled trials, and several other clinical trials, for spinal cord injury recovery in animals, but none of these were medically useful for humans. Same is true for the treatment of strokes, neurological disease, autoimmune disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Muscular Dystrophies, Rheumatoid Arthritis, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis and other connective tissue diseases.
4. There are two ways an animal suffers during experiments in a laboratory: first, the procedures and second the confinement. The animals suffer trauma of maternal separation at an early age, isolation from their species, not being able to follow their natural instincts and behavior. Finally, the pain they go through during transportation and culling has proven to be very traumatic. They go through various kinds of processes, which includes being exposed to various types of chemicals, being forced to eat, going through surgeries, burns, injuries, biopsies, nutrition deprivation and being tranquilized.
5. There are several methods of animal experimentation that should be enough to put the entire research community to shame. Tests are performed after putting the animals such as monkeys, pigs, mice and dogs etc. through induced heart attacks, heart failures, strokes and forced abnormal heart rhythms. Animals are put through fatal burn injuries to test new burn treatments. For the sake of military and civilian trauma research animals are shot and hit with blunt objects, and later they are put through new experimental emergency surgical procedures.
6. Further inhumane animal experimentations include studying the results of “Induced Helplessness” where animals are put in an inescapable state of fear and frustration. Animals are forced to swim to exhaustion, hanged by their tails and put through relentless electric shocks. All this to examine how the animal behaves at the point where it stops resisting the irritant.
7. The life inside these laboratories are inhumane and disturbing for animals. The routine collection of blood, dosing through drugs and exposure to prolonged amount of physiological stress. The cages where the animals are put are not designed to provide a natural environment, moreover they are deprived from their basic social, psychological and behavioral needs. These small cages often lead to self-injury, psychological distress and mutilation.
8. There are a lot of supplementary research techniques to animal experimentation like the stem cell methods, human tissue studies, in vitro techniques, computational models, systems biology, bioinformatics, tissue engineering, microfluidics, genetic methods, advanced imaging technologies, epidemiology and various other techniques.
9. One of the biggest supplement to animal experimentation is the study of human population, most commonly known as Epidemiology, this study has helped research of identifying various risks to human health progress. Epidemiology is proof that research generated from techniques other than animal experimentation has proved to be more useful because they brought forth the health effects of smoking, industrial toxic exposures, hazards of pollution, poor personal and public hygiene. Epidemiology also helped science grasp the ground realities of heart disease, stroke, cancer and various other diseases. It’s safe to assume that this kind of pragmatic and calculated research work is much safe and reliable than the hit and trial methods of animal experimentation.
10. Finally, there is the computer-based research technique, which is a perfect replacement for animal experimentation as virtual disease and treatment models can be created and then studied. Real-time collection of medical human data points can help execute virtual human trials. These genetic methods aren’t only used to collect research of data influencing genetic expression, like gene homology or RNA interference but also making sure that disease risk profiles and treatments are developed while keeping each genetic determinants in focus.

We’ve not only given you some very gruesome facts about animal experimentation but also helped you by providing alternative research techniques to animal experimentation. All of these facts can be used to create some very definitive and convincing arguments.

Next, we are going to help you find your topic of debate in our piece which is 20 debate speech topics on animal experimentation and also standalone debate speech guide for this particular subject.

Reference:
Taylor K, Gordon N, Langley G, Higgins W. Estimates for worldwide laboratory animal use in 2005. ATLA. 2008;36:327-342.
Knight A. 127 million non-human vertebrates used worldwide for scientific purposes in 2005. ATLA. 2008;36:494-496.
Humane Society of the United States (2001). Poll shows Americans disapprove of animal research when it causes the animals to suffer. Accessed June 11, 2008 at: http://www.hsus.org/press_and_publications/press_releases/poll_shows_americans_disapprove_of_ animal_research_when_it_causes_the_animals_to_suffer.html
Plous S. Opinion research on animal experimentation: areas of support and concern. Accessed June 11, 2008 at http://altweb.jhsph. edu/meetings/pain/plous.htm.
Sky News (2006). Accessed May 2006 at http://news.sky.com/ skynews. Link is no longer available, but poll data are available.
Balcombe JP, Barnard ND, Sandusky C. Laboratory routines cause animal stress. Contemporary Topics. 2004;43, 42-51.
Bross I. How animal research can kill you. The AV Magazine. November 1983.