According to research compiled in 2015 by Rebecca Ram, a clinical data and research scientist for the Lush Prize, the Northwick park disaster is an animal testing incident gone wrong. In 2006 six men took a drug known as TNG1412. It was a clinical trial at Northwick Park Hospital in London. Within two hours this caused life-threatening and disastrous side effects, including organ failure and brain swelling. This same drug had been given to five hundred monkeys and the results showed no ill effects. It was then considered safe to proceed in human trials. This is one of the many cases where animal testing has been cleared to proceed with human trials and gone horribly wrong. The Animal Welfare Act only protects so many animals. To emphasize further, humans and animals aren't the same so why test on them. Overall Animal testing is bad and harsh. It also provides little insight into what would actually happen if we undergo human trials. I am going to discuss why it's cruel, ineffective, and why it is unnecessary.

First, Animal testing is just cruel in general, animals undergo severe amounts of pain during these tests. Animals feel pain the same way humans do. Research has concluded that their reactions are almost identical to the way humans react. This means that when we test on animals to find out if treatment may work if it doesn't, the animals suffer the damages. The article ¨Do Humans Feel Pain the same way Animals Do¨ by Andrea Nolan published in 2015, points out that animals can't verbally communicate pain the same way we do. Besides barking or whining, they rely on us to know their tolerances. They don´t understand soothing words or know that their going to be into surgery soon, and may not feel the pain much longer. Concluding that they would suffer more if we were under the same circumstances. Although animals and humans have both benefited from some of these cruel tests like curing rabies, distemper, feline leukemia, and creating a better understanding of treating certain conditions. Researchers do recognize that there is good that has come from these experiments but, is it really worth the amounts of casualties of both animals and humans?

The Animal Welfare Act sets standards for how the animals are supposed to be kept like the temperature of their housing areas, closure size, and access to food and water. They are also supposed to get frequent checkups by a veterinarian. Despite this Act being in place it has not prevented horrific cases of animal abuse to happen. As stated in the ¨Should Animal Testing be used for Scientific and Commercial Research¨ article written by the ProCon Organization last updated in 2016. There was an incident at the University of California at the Davis Center for Neuroscience. There, three baby mice were found unattended in a sealed plastic bag and left on the counter. This is one of the many cases where animals have gone through cruel antics in order to help us and at the least not being taken care of the way they should have. The rules of this act have been broken at the cost of many animals lives. This suggests that I can infer that animal testing is definitely cruel. Although it has helped with finding cures to some diseases, that was at the cost of animal cruelty and even casualty.

Secondly, I am going to be discussing why the tests are ineffective. As stated in the ¨Animal Replacement Science Application¨ of December of 2016. In 2004 there was a new anti-inflammatory drug released, called rofecoxib. This drug ended up being withdrawn from supermarkets due to safety concerns. Although this was was not only considered safe on animals, it was considered a protectant that helps their bodies. The aftermath of this drug release cause around 88,000- 140,000 people to suffer a heart attack while on or taking the drug. This is one of the many recalls of drugs that has been animal tested and approved. These examples are reasons why it's ineffective. To start its  bad science, human anatomy is not the same as animals. This points out that they already make bad test subjects. As shown in the article, ¨The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation¨ written by Aysha Akhtar in October 2016, scientists should have to apply the ¨Appreciation of differences¨. This means that they should take into context before testing on animals that their metabolism, genetics, and overall mind aren't that applicable or easily compared to the human body and mind.

Although animal testing has not been completely ineffective with cases shown in many studies. The article ¨Animal research generates new treatments¨ written by the Office Media Relations of UCLA, in February of 2008, shows that animal testing has helped deepen our understandings for many diseases; for example research may have found a medication that might help cure breast cancer. UCLA research has shown that testing on mice helped created a basis for a human trial that was going to be conducted. This led to a breakthrough which created a better understanding of the medication Herceptin. This is one of the first cancer-fighting drugs that target a specific genetic change and cancer cells. Animal testing has proved that it can work in some cases, but that doesn't out rule what hasn't worked and what has gone wrong. From all the data collected someone would be able to acknowledge the good that animal testing has done, but also the bad. To conclude with all the evidence shown animal testing being ineffective bypasses it being effective.

Lastly, I am going to explain why animal testing is unnecessary. One of the main reasons I say it's unnecessary is because as stated in an Article written by the Peta organization ¨Wasted Money, Wasted Lives¨ in 2014. Points out that the EPA, The Environmental Protection Association/Agency, has an animals research budget of around $600 million. Some of this money goes towards buying more animals to be tested on and also buying new equipment to help do more research. This is a large amount of money and just the thought of it being wasted on animals that keep dying and undergoing these trials is unreasonable. This money, instead of being wasted on buying more animals that keep dying, could be put towards more study into substitutes and undergoing these better alternative testings. There are many different and more effective substitutes that could bypass animal testing.

The Table of ¨Validated and Accepted Alternative Methods¨ for animal testing, last updated in November of 2016. Shows that there are multiple different substitutes instead of animal testing. Examples like using blood from human volunteers to test and see if there are fever contaminates which would save thousands of rabbits of Pyrogen tests. Next, there are also multiple Vitro tests and already available animal and human data that could be used to determine the likelihood for skin sensitization instead of undergoing guinea pig and mice tests. Finally, you have regular volunteer studies. There has been an increasing amount of technological advances that have developed many different scanning machines and techniques that could be used to ensure the safety of volunteer studies. In conclusion there are many alternatives that could be used as a replacement for animal testing and that why it's unnecessary.

Overall, animal testing is cruel because animals are supposed to undergo tests and trials that cause severe amounts of pain to their bodies and minds. They suffer more than we would if we were to undergo the same tests. Evidence has also shown that animals and humans aren't similar enough to be passing tests on animals and concluding that they´ll do the same and work on humans. Multiple animal tests and trials have also shown that although the medicine may work and even go to benefit the animal. That does not mean it will work during human clinical trials like with the Northwick Park hospital disaster. Lastly, animal testing is not needed because there are many alternatives that can be used instead of this experimentation. Animals are just being wasted after their killed and or incapable of undergoing more testings. From all this, I can conclude that animal testing is heinous, not effective, and avoidable with all the alternatives and substitutes that could replace animal testing.