LAVC Medical Ethics Medical Research Studies Involving Animals Discussion
Description
Discussion prompt
Animal research is a necessary practice in the world of medical research, allowing scientists to develop life-saving interventions and to spot catastrophic problems before new techniques or products make their way to actual patients. However, this does not mean that we should deny that there are serious ethical issues involved.
Animal testing is not a pretty or pleasant process. It causes pain and suffering to animal subjects, and legitimate cases of abuse have been uncovered by animal rights groups. Consequently, the practice should be tightly regulated, and alternative methods should be employed whenever possible.
Discuss a specific research study involving animals that had ethical issues.
What were the ethical issues involved?
What could have been done to conduct the research study differently to avoid these ethical issues?
Respond to at least two of your classmates postings.
comment 1
There have been many research studies involving animals in the past and currently. Psychological studies regarding nature versus nurture with monkeys left subject monkeys scarred for life in the Harry Harlow experiments. The monkeys were stripped away from their mothers at birth and placed in cages with two surrogate mothers (Cherry, 2020). One surrogate mother had a cloth on her and the other one was made with wires and only provided food. The studies showed that the monkeys spent more time with the mother who nurtured them with the warmth and comfort, the cloth, versus the mother who gave them food. Many ethical issues were involved in the study. One issue was how it affected the baby monkeys. They were left with high levels of anxiety and stress later in life. They preferred to be alone and play by themselves when put together with other baby monkeys. I dont know what could have been done differently in the study because the results of it greatly impacted the way we do animal studies today. It also started a whole new way we look at humans in the study of psychology.
References:
Cherry, K. (2020, December 03). How Harry Harlows research on LOVE shaped how we treat children today. Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/harry-harlow-and-the-nature-of-love-2795255#:~:text=His%20most%20famous%20experiment%20involved,terrycloth%20but%20provided%20no%20food.&text=Harlow%20removed%20young%20monkeys%20from,raised%22%20by%20these%20mother%20surrogates.
comment 2
There has been animal research studies on testing out drugs on animals before used in humans. Animals are locked in cages for the rest of there lives so they can be tested. Some animals develop stress, some are restrained and cant go anywhere, the anmials have a abnormal behavior due to stress. Half of these experiments that are used on animals dont work on humans how they expected it to. For example, it states, in another example of human suffering resulting from animal experimentation, six human volunteers were injected with an immunomodulatory drug in 2006, wiithin minutes of recieving the drug. All volunteers suffered a severe adverse reaction resulting a life threatening cytokine storm that led to a systemic organ failure. They tested this in animals first and they had no ill effect. When tested in humans it had an opposite effect. This shows that there is no benefit to test animals with drugs. Im not sure what could have been done differently to avoid ethical issues but if the results are not giving the same on humans like on animals whats the point on caging animals for testing if its not working. Humans are harmed because of misleading animal testing results.
References
Akhtar, A. (2015 October), The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/
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