F.A.Q.

F.A.Q.

What is animal experimentation ?

Animal experimentation was originally called vivisection, which meant cutting into or using invasive techniques on living animals. The term is derived from the Latin word vivus, which means alive. Vivisection today is commonly called animal experimentation.
Currently, animals are used in biomedical science in essentially nine ways :

  1.   Animal tissues as spare parts (e.g., heart valves) or ingredients for vaccines and drugs.
  2. Animals as factories (e.g., to produce insulin and monoclonal antibodies).
  3. Animals as models for human disease (e.g., to find the cause and cure for disease like cancer and AIDS).
  4. Animals as test subjects (e.g., to test drugs for efficacy and side effects, and to test chemicals to determine if they cause cancer).
  5. Animal tissue and intact animals to study basic physiological principles.
  6. Animals for dissection such as in education or for physicians to practice procedures on.
  7. Animals as a modality for ideas (for the purpose of heuristic procedure).
  8. Using an animal to study a disease or condition for the benefit of the same species but not the benefit of the individual animal being studied.
  9. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

In this book we will use the word experimentation to mean studying an individual (human or animal) for a purpose other than to benefit that individual. This is opposed to research, which we use to mean studying an individual with an aim to do good for that individual or at least for a purpose that is of no harm to that individual.

Animals as Models for Testing Drugs

Animal models as a source of ideas

Animals As Models for Human Diseases

Animals as factories and spare parts

Using animals to study diseases in other animals, for Dissection, and animal tissue to study basic physiologic principles and Knowledge for Knowledge sake

What will we use if not animals ?