Is Animal Testing Justified?
It’s more than justified – it’s essential to the advancement of modern medicine. When a new drug is in development, it must be tested extensively prior to use in humans. The further removed these test are from humans, the less reliable they are. Lets say that a lab is developing a new drug to treat diabetes. The first step is hypothetical – they must justify why this drug may be effective in treating diabetes. Unfortunately, living systems are very hard to predict, especially when our understanding of them is incomplete. A drug that looks great on paper might be lethal when used on a live subject. The second step is usually cell culture. The drug is tested in cells grown in a petri dish. It’s a fairly accurate test of how a drug will work, but it’s not perfect. Cells in a petri dish behave differently than they do in the body. That’s why after successful testing in culture, new drugs must be tested in animals. There have been plenty of drugs that worked spectacularly in cell culture, b
