Does animal experimentation benefit human health, and is it morally right?
The claim that virtually every major advance in the past 100 years has come from animal studies has been made so many times that many people believe it without questioning. A very common claim is that our life expectancy has been increased because of the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics. But a substantial body of Public Health literature makes it clear that at most, 3.5 percent of the total decline in mortality since 1900 can be ascribed to medical measures. Rather, it is due to public health measures such as improved sanitation and better living conditions. The impact of vaccines and antibiotics was in fact quite small. The physicians who make up the Medical Research Modernization Committee have undertaken studies to determine how often the data gained from animal experiments are actually used by doctors in understanding or treating illnesses. What they have found is quite startling: Animal experiments have been of very little, if any, help in understanding or treating humans, an
