What is true about the use of animals in research?

Why Are Animals Used in Research?

Human beings use animals for a wide variety of purposes, including research. The approximately 260 million people in the United States keep about 110 million dogs and cats as pets. More than 5 billion animals are killed in the United States each year as a source of food. Animals are used for transportation, for sport, for recreation, and for companionship.7

Animals are also used to learn more about living things and about the illnesses that afflict human beings and other animals. By studying animals, it is possible to obtain information that cannot be learned in any other way. When a new drug or surgical technique is developed, society deems it unethical to use that drug or technique first in human beings because of the possibility that it would cause harm rather than good. Instead, the drug or technique is tested in animals to make sure that it is safe and effective.

Animals also offer experimental models that would be impossible to replicate using human subjects. Animals can be fed identical and closely monitored diets. As with inbred mice, members of some animal species are genetically identical, enabling researchers to compare different procedures on identical animals. Some animals have biological similarities to humans that make them particularly good models for specific diseases, such as rabbits for atherosclerosis or monkeys for polio. (The polio vaccine was developed, and its safety is still tested, in monkeys.) Animals are also indispensable to the rapidly growing field of biotechnology, where they are used to develop, test, and make new products such as monoclonal antibodies.

Researchers draw upon the full range of living things to study life, from bacteria to human beings.8 Many basic biological processes are best studied in single cells, tissue cultures, or plants, because they are the easiest to grow or examine. But researchers also investigate a wide range of animal species, from insects and nematodes to dogs, cats, and monkeys. In particular, mammals are essential to researchers because they are the closest to us in evolutionary terms. For example, many diseases that affect human beings also affect other mammals, but they do not occur in insects, plants, or bacteria.

Far fewer animals are used in research than are used for other purposes. An estimated 17 to 22 million vertebrate animals are used each year in research, education, and testing—less than 1 percent of the number killed for food.9 About 85 percent of these animals are rats and mice that have been bred for research. In fiscal year 1988, about 142,000 dogs and 52,000 cats were used in experimentation, with 40,000 to 50,000 of those dogs being bred specifically for research and the others being acquired from pounds.10 Between 50,000 and 60,000 nonhuman primates, such as monkeys and chimpanzees, are studied each year, many of them coming from breeding colonies in the United States.11

Overview: The Horrors Of Animal Testing

Tens of millions of animals are used in laboratory experiments every year in the United States — and by most estimates, between 85 and 95% of these animals are not protected by the law. Those without protection are complex beings who think and feel pain, just the same as those who have legal protections.

This figure is only an approximation because under current law, labs are not required to disclose data about the animals most often used in experimentation — rats, mice, birds, and fish.

Animals are used across fields, in many types of research: biomedical, aeronautic, automotive, military, agricultural, behavioral, and cognitive research, and in consumer product testing. It’s estimated that the National Institutes of Health spends some $14.5 billion per year of taxpayer dollars on animal experimentation. The overall amount spent on animal research is likely far higher, given that the $14.5 billion figure doesn’t include spending by other federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture or animal research funded by private companies.

Thanks to better technology and increasing public demand, we have seen some progress.

For example, after decades of scrutiny and pressure from animal protection groups, the general public and the international community, in 2015 the National Institutes of Health announced the agency would no longer support the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. Since that time, NIH has retired some chimpanzees to sanctuaries as space is available, and has reportedly convened a working group to develop plans for chimpanzees deemed too old or sick to be safely relocated.

But our work here is far from done. Despite legal requirements to do so under principles known as the “3 Rs” — reduction, refinement, and replacement — many facilities don’t adequately look for alternatives to animal-based tests.

Experts also recognize the need for more change. In 2007, the National Research Council — an organization that puts out reports and policy recommendations for The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — issued a report on toxicity testing that recommended a move away from the use of animals in laboratory experiments.

Many scientists believe that in vitro testing is scientifically superior to inhumane testing on animals. The same is true for radiation exposure tests and cosmetic testing. Technology, such as non-invasive imaging, provide alternatives to cutting into animals’ brains. Cancer antibody testing is better conducted with human cells than by injecting mice with cancer.

On top of that, animal testing does not achieve its intended results. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), just 8% of drugs tested on animals are deemed safe and effective for human use — 92% are not. This helps bolster the argument that animal testing does not provide enough worthwhile information to justify its wide scale cruelty, and calls into question the ethics of animal testing.

We’ve seen important promising developments, but the millions of animals experimented on in United States labs every year show how much more is still needed.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund calls on government agencies to be more transparent in their treatment of animals used in research. We file lawsuits to compel taxpayer-funded research facilities to follow records laws, so that public funds are used with public awareness.

We work throughout the legal system to secure better protections for animals used in research, and better enforcement of those protections.

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