Animal Testing

New medicines, products, cosmetics, etc, are being invented almost every day in some part of the world. Most of these products are developed only for human use. These products cannot be directly used by the humans without being tested because sometimes the usage of these products by the humans may introduce allergy or even cause serious illness or death even if the medicine or drug is not taken in correct propositions. They also test the products on animals because some of the ingredients of the product might cause harm to humans. So researchers, scientists and companies first test the medicines or the products with the animals before introducing it into the market for use by humans. Suppose if the researchers feel that the animal on which testing is carried on developed allergy when a particular product is tested, they work on their research again till the testing of their product in mice gives successful result. This is called animal testing. Every year, a large number of animals are killed either intentionally or unintentionally because of animal testing. Animal testing is done on almost all the animals. But scientists mostly use mice or rodents to test their inventions because the genes of mice match with those that of humans. Moreover, mice are used for testing because they reproduce at a faster rate when compared to other animals and they are easy to handle by the researchers and scientists. Nowadays, scientists are trying to develop genetically modified mice whose genes exactly match the humans. This makes the testing even more accurate and perfect. The scientists have special animals in their laboratories only on which they test their medicines and drugs. They do not simply use road side animals to test their drugs. The reason why researchers chose animals for testing is because they do not feel any pain when the drug is tested on them. This is because they have only five senses and they also lack consciousness. Animal testing is more prevalent in India when compared to other countries. So if the researchers in other countries want to test their medicine or drug, they come to India to do animal testing because in other countries animal testing is illegal under their law. Nowadays, animal testing have been banned by most of the companies in the world. But there are many cases in which animal testing have proved wrong. One such example is thalidomide, which was a drug used to treat morning sickness. This drug was tested on animals and since this drug did not cause any harm to animals, this drug was introduced into the market. But later they found that regular consumption of this drug lead to birth defects. There is still a debate going on claiming whether animal testing is legal or not. One group argues that without testing on animals, none of the products can be used by the humans because just by inventing a product, the researchers cannot correctly predict how it will work on humans. So testing the products on animals make them feel that their invention works in the manner they wanted it to be and thus bring the product into market. But the other group argues that animals are being tortured by the humans in the name of testing and humans have no right to exploit the animals in the way they want. Animals do have their own rights even though they cannot claim it to the humans. They also argue that the tests done on animals need not necessarily work in the same way as it works in the animal that is tested.  Animal testing causes serious problem to the environment also. Frogs and cockroaches are the animals which are dissected the most while doing experiments. Frogs form an important part of food chain because they feed on a large number of insects. As they are being dissected, there is a significant reduction in the number of frog species and this only indirectly affects the food chain and hence the environment. However, regulations have been framed by the government that researchers should use minimum number of animals to perform testing. That is, they should try to test only their final product and not during each and every stage of their development. Nowadays, several alternate methods are considered instead of animal testing. Suppose if a particular drug or a medicine can be tested without the use of animals, then the researchers should try to follow that method. Animal testing has both advantages and disadvantages.  So humans should use try to avoid animal testing as much as possible thinking in welfare of the animals.