Band 6+: Some people argue that all experimentation on animals is bad and should be outlawed. However, others believe that important scientific discoveries can be made from animal experiments. Can experimentation on animals be justified? Are there any alternatives? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience.

Experimentation on animals has been a long-debated topic for decades. Many people believe that experimentation on animals goes against nature’s laws and everything we believe in, since most animals are sentient beings which have feelings and emotions similar to humans. Whereas others believe that animals are a lower life form than humans and shouldn’t be viewed as equals since they are ‘just animals’ and don’t have a consciousness. Personally, I believe that animals are conscious of their surroundings and feel pain just as human beings do so it’s to be considered as animal cruelty.

Despite arguments made by people, some people believe that the benefits of animal experimentation outweigh the drawbacks due to animal experimentation being used to benefit society; for instance, testing vaccines and cures on animals instead of human beings, since animals reproduce much faster than humans and outnumber humans by a thousandfold. Moreover, they believe that animals should be less prioritized than human evolution and safety, and they use the argument of major scientific breakthroughs being discovered due to animal experimentation, like the COVID-19 vaccine and the Monkeypox vaccine, which were both tested on animals until the vaccines were perfected and suitable for human use.

Conversely, others argue that just as humans feel emotions and pain, so do animals, and that alone should be enough to stop animal experimentation, since these animals are being dragged away from their families and put in cages, alongside being used as experimental animals. Furthermore, they believe that animals are sentient and shouldn’t be treated as lesser life forms. Moreover, they believe that governments should implement stricter laws, banishing animal experimentation and exacerbating the legal punishments for animal experimentation.

Overall, I believe that the drawbacks of animal experimentation outweigh the benefits by a huge margin, due to animals being sentient and having emotions. I believe that there could be other ways of experimentation that could be more beneficial. If scientists continue to discover new genetic codes, I believe that we could make unsentient beings in labs that can be experimented on; for instance, recently a direwolf species that went extinct over 10,000 years ago has been recently brought back to life using genomes found it old fossils. I believe this can be replicated for other life forms that can be used in these experiments.