The Ethical Debate: Animal Testing and Human Progress
Today I know better and believe me when I tell you drug synthesis isn’t an easy task. It takes years and years to synthesize a drug for a particular condition and sometimes, it doesn’t e even turn out well. So now, imagine testing such a drug on a human being without any prior testing on other organisms? Not cool to lose lives right? Yes!
Animals and humans have so much in common. After synthesizing a drug, testing stage is next. But in the testing stage, we don’t go straight forward to test it on humans. Even animals are not the first to be given the dozes of the drug. First, preclinical trails takes place where the dug is is grown in vivo (in the laboratory in a cell culture) after which its reactions and effects are observed. If the right results are not achieved, the drug is tweaked to meet the requirements and once there’s a positive result, we move to animal trail.
For a drug to be able to move to the animal trail stage, it needs to be able to pass the clinical trials. Here, animals such as rats are induced with doses of the drug and observed for sometime. This allows for side effects to be monitored at any point in time while also understanding the disease better. For example, let’s assume I’m formulating a drug for the Covid 19 virus. After clinical trials, a rat would be injected with the Covid 19 virus after which the vaccine would be introduced. Most of the time, these vaccines are attenuated forms of the virus which helps to ensure a lasting immune response for the individual. Animal trails also help us know the right dose to be given to individuals for each symptom presented so as to not be overdosed or under-dosed.
Once the drug passes the animal trails stage, it then proceeds to the human clinical trails stage where a group of people are given dozes of the drugs and observed for side effects, and any other symptoms that may arise. After all these, once the drug is able to pass all these stages, it is then approved to be used and administered to the general public. In as much as using animals for some trails for drugs testing might look cruel, imagine how cruel it would be to to use humans for the first stage of testing. Lives would be lost in the process so it’s best to use these animals. After everything is said and done, these animals are either released or euthanized depending on the outcome.
Personally, I believe this is a necessary evil for the good of mankind and the world at large.
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