Is animal testing necessary in labs?
It is absolutely necessary in laboratories. We use animals for so many different kinds of things that if all animal testing were eliminated tomorrow, whole fields would grind to a halt. With 20,000 people dying of cancer alone every day, animal testing is the best and least cruel of our available options. You’re going to hear a lot about alternatives to animal testing, but there’s one common misconception that you should see: There aren’t alternatives to “animal testing” so much as there are to this test here and that test there. What would replace a zebrafish in a genetics laboratory would not be able to replace a cat in a neuroscience experiment. For example, last year, the MIMIC system came out. It’s an artificial immune system in a test tube that can be used to help scientists develop vaccines. It’s fast and accurate and replaces some of the steps in the vaccine development process that would otherwise need to be performed on animals–but it doesn’t replace “animal testing” entirel
