    According to then Baylor College of Medicine PhD Richard R. Sharp in his academic work titled Ethical Issues in the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research, the first accounts of animal dissection occurred in ancient Greece around 500 B.C. This was revealed to us in ancient Greek writings. These same writings also reveal that early animal dissection procedures were conducted in hopes to gain knowledge of anatomy, as early Greek physicians focused their efforts in understanding the "physiological processes" of organisms. Although Greeks are credited with being the first to conduct physical tests on animal specimens, the Romans can be credited with conducting the "first genuine experiments involving animals" similar to experiments that we are familiar with today. In particular a Roman physician named Galen really became the first to conduct experiments on animals to "test hypotheses and explore competing explanations and theories of biological phenomena." Galen's theories and studies rapidly gained popularity across the continent and for the next 1500 years Galen was revered as the father of animal testing. For the next few centuries there would be thousands of experiments conducted on animal specimens by several different scientists and physicians, yet in most cases these professionals used the ideas and theories of Galen as a model for their own respective works. For over a millennium animal testing faced little to no opposition, as it was generally viewed as necessary to practice because it afforded mankind with a better understanding of physiological processes in organisms. Up until the 20th century animal experimentation was essentially a very loose and open practice. On August 24, 1966, the federal Animal Welfare Act was passed in the United States. This act was put in place to mandate and regulate any animal experimentation conducted in the United States. With national attention turned to the issue of animal rights, the pro animal rights movement began to pick up steam.  From this movement groups such as PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals), and ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty) to name a few had been created. These organizations root themselves fighting for the rights of animals and to end animal experimentation. While many have the hope that animal testing will one day will entirely cease, I find that to this to be an extremely unrealistic outlook on the issue because animal testing has been common place in the world for hundreds of years. A better approach to this issue would be to assess the issue then seek ways to lessen the prevalence of animal testing by pushing to find common ground. 

     No matter how strongly disagree with animal experimentation, the facts simply do not lie. Over the centuries, the experimentation on animal specimens has resulted in humans gaining a vast amount of scientific knowledge. A Gallup Poll conducted in May 2013 showed that fifty-six percent of Americans morally accepted experimentation on animals for medical research, with thirty-nine percent of people believing it to be morally wrong, and seventeen percent of people being neutral. For someone such as me, who is a part of the thirty-nine percent that find animal experimentation morally wrong, believe it is wrong for reasons such as: It is inhumane and unjust, it is no longer necessary, there are numerous alternatives, and animals make for poor test specimens, result can be misleading, safety, and etc ...  Most individuals that are strongly against animal experimentation are pro animal rights. This is why individuals who have this particular stance never really considers, or likes to consider for that matter, any possible good that has come from animal experimentation. No matter how strongly disagree with animal experimentation, the facts simply do not lie. Over the centuries, the experimentation on animal specimens has resulted in humans gaining a vast amount of scientific knowledge. It has also resulted in several medical discoveries which in return have benefitted both humans and animals. An example of a medical breakthrough discovered from animal experimentation is mentioned in the ProCon.org article "Animal Testing" was "discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetic through experimentation on dogs by having their pancreases removed" (1). Another medical breakthrough resulting from animal experimentation was the discovery of a vaccine to cure Hepatitis B from testing on Chimpanzee specimens. Which is mentioned in the article crucial in that  "we wouldn't have a vaccine for hepatitis B without chimpanzees," and says that the use of chimps is "our best hope" for finding a vaccine for Hepatitis C, a disease that kills 15,000 people every year in the United States" (1). Although, one cannot overlook the positive outcomes in regards to medical knowledge that we have today because of experimentation on animals. We would simply not be as medically advanced today if it were not for animal experimentation. This fact and the claim that "continued research involving animals is essential in solving future medical problem" (BMJ 460) is often used by supporters of animal experimentation when arguing their position.   

     With their main opposition being animal rights activists, and pro animal rights organizations I would say these respective people would be the target audience of an animal experimentation supporters. I believe most supporters of animal experimentation would not just blatantly criticize their opposition and dismiss their opinions on the issue. That would just be unsympathetic and would make it difficult to try to at least find middle ground on the issue, let alone persuading them completely. From reading and analyzing persuasive articles supporting animal experimentation, I believe the backbone of majority of these articles bases itself on the claim that animal experimentation in necessary because it is conducted for the sake of science and the human greater good. 

     As stated, in M. Ideland's Journal of Medical Ethics titled "Different Views on Ethics: How Animal Ethics Is Situated in a Committee Culture" people who support the experimentation of animals for scientific research believe it to necessary because it is done "in the name of science and in the name of patients" (259). Supporters of animal experimentation tend to argue that it is necessary in regards to it "contributing to the evolvement of science" (259). This is very much a reasonable claim. Through laboratory experimentation on animal specimens over the century we have discovered numerous scientific breakthroughs, with the most important being medical science breakthroughs for both humans and animals. Also mentioned in the journal, Ideland states that people with this same stance believe it is "unethical NOT to use non-human animal experimentation in research" (259). What he is saying is that the main concern of these individuals is that if scientific experimentation is not conducted on animals, it would be a disservice to both humans and animals because the research is done to benefit both. Even though this is an idea shared by numerous animal experimentation supporters, there is still discrepancy in this ideology amongst individuals because: do animals have right? If any, what are they? 

Those specific questions cause for extended debate even between those who have a pro stance on animal experimentation.

      


    For as long as we have conducted experiments on animals, the issue of whether or not it should be done for human research has always been controversial. The first major push to end the experimentation on animals for scientific and commercial use did not come until August 24th, 1966, with the passing of the Animal Welfare Act. This law was issued to regulate how animals are treated. However, even in the wake of the Animal Welfare Act, animals are still being experimented on in laboratories across the globe. 

    Over the course of the century, society has tended to take the side favoring the use of animals for scientific and commercial experimentation and for good reason. Wesley Smith supports this claim in his piece "The Grim Good of Animal Research" by mentioning the positive outcomes that have resulted from experimenting on animals. Animal experiments prolong the suffering of people waiting for effective cures by misleading experimenters and squandering precious money, time, and resources that could have been spent on human-relevant research (Smith 1). An example of this would be the experimentation of mice infected with prion disease and then experimented with methods to ameliorate the effects to gain knowledge on how to potentially stop diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, etc ...  (1). People who argue for this cause tend to challenge the idea human experimentation. This is because their arguments tend to base itself on the human safety. Smith supports this idea by making the claim that "animal testing also provides a crucial safety check that can inform scientists what won't work, so unnecessary human experiments aren't conducted" (1). That was the pattern in the research that helped transform AIDS from a universally fatal disease into a chronic affliction with which patients are enabled to lead longer and healthier lives. Not to say this is a bad thing in any way shape or, however, there are proven methods of conducting experiments on human volunteer specimens. 

For example, we have discovered that we can develop immunity to certain viruses if our bodies take in a small dosage, or a non active dosage of a virus. People who take their stance supporting the experimentation of animals also tend to challenge the idea of animal rights. In regards to this issue, the idea of whether or not animals have natural rights, and if so what are their right, will always be up for debate.

       Up until 1966, there was no real opposing force towards animal experimentation. However, this began to change on August 24th, 1966, with the passing of the Animal Welfare Act or AWA. This was start point that would lead to the serious movement for animal rights. From this movement groups such as PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals), and ASPCA   (American Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty) to name a few had been created. These organizations root themselves fighting for the rights of animals. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the idea of animal rights are one of those debated issues in which people choose their stance usually based on their own moral. In hind sight, supporters of this movement argue that like humans, animals are born with natural rights. People who are pro animal's rights also tend to argue that instead of wrongful experimenting on animals that we should instead look for other alternatives. For instance, in Noah Barlsky's piece titled "Animals Testing Is Bad Science" he explains he consider animal testing to be unnecessary and wasteful. One of the biggest claims he 

makes regarding alternative to animals as scientific specimens is that human clinical and epidemiological studies, human tissue- and cell-based research methods, cadavers, sophisticated high-fidelity human patient simulators and computational models are more reliable, more precise, less expensive, and more humane than animal experiments (Barlsky 1). Barlsky reminds the audience that animals are not humans; therefore they do not to things we might react too and vice versa. In his excerpt he states that taking a healthy being from a completely different species, artificially inducing a condition that he or she would never normally contract, keeping him or her in an unnatural and distressful environment and trying to apply the results to naturally occurring diseases in human beings is dubious at best. Physiological reactions to drugs vary enormously from species to species (1).

      In the debate of the best possible solutions of replacing animals as research specimens in laboratories, Geoff Watt's medical journal titled "Animal Testing: is it worth?" attacks the ideology that animal are essential in the human medical research industry. The fact of the matter is animals are not as indispensible to human medical research as it maybe once was (Watts 1). With the advancements in modern medical technology we have been able to grow and regenerate human features such as limbs, organs, cell structures, etc ...  which have given us the opportunity to experiment and get better results from actual human specimens. I am proposing that increased efforts should be made to develop and test more authentic human compounds such human organs, and other human cellular structures. The testing on actual human features would be a more effective in human medical research. As mentioned in the article, Microdosing, a more recent development, is currently putting experimental studies back into bodies of human volunteers (2). This method has resulted in the development of the many vaccines that we currently use today. 

    Anyone can make a claim supporting or condemning the issue of animal experimentation, but one aspect that I find extremely difficult to defend is the entire economic cost of conducting experiments on animals in the U.S. According to a feature poll on PETA.org, in the United States we spend sixteen billion dollars annually for animal testing at the expense of the tax payer; and of the sixteen billion dollars spent on animal testing annually, it is estimated that twelve billion dollars are ultimately wasted. On average, National Institutes of Health in the U.S allocate forty percent of their respective budgets each year which ends up totaling to roughly sixteen billion dollars. From those numbers alone it might be smart that the government reevaluate or at least take a look in to how the dispersion of the budget of National Health Institutions; however, this is a debate for another setting. I personally believe that animal experimentation would not nearly be as controversial of an issue if the amount of money spent on conducting research on animals equaled its realistic value; however, this is simply not the case. Before any solution can be drawn up we have sit down and determine what is responsible for the annual waste of billions of dollars. In the case of the U.S, this is formulated by the excess amount of funds being used to conduct research on animals with results that proved to be either, irrelevant, inconsistent, unreliable, or misleading. This is due to the obvious fact that we as a human species are far more complex and different from any other species on earth. 

         As I previously alluded to, the one concept that is crucial to understand regardless of anyone's stance on animal experimentation is that although human processes can be similar to processes in other species, they are not exactly the same and should be treated as such. It is imperative that this concept is taken in to valuable consideration by companies and National Health Institutions that conduct experiments on animals. Wesley Smith attests this problem in his piece "The Grim Good of Animal Research" of the often misleading and unreliable results gained from animals testing in comparing to the affect on humans. Animal experiments prolong the suffering of people waiting for effective cures by misleading experimenters and squandering precious money, time, and resources that could have been spent on human-relevant research (Smith 1). 

       Whether it be for commercial or scientific use there is no question that animal experimentation has provided mankind with an abundant amount of knowledge in regards to these respective circumstances; however, in today's age animal experimentation has become unnecessary and excessive to a large degree. This is because the amount of money put in to animal experimentation greatly over exceeds the value of the results coming from testing. Animal testing is also subjected to providing us with inaccurate and misleading results. To combat this issue large world corporations must cease or limit their testing on animals. Some notable corporations that have made efforts in moving away from testing on animals are DOVE and AVON. Each of these corporations has adopted non-animal alternatives, and each publically promoting the movement for non-animal alternative methods for experimentation. It is important that companies and corporations consider conducting research by means of non-animal alternatives such as bioengineered cell-structures and, human cadavers, and vitro methods. 

    

