Nowadays, animals are used to test different types of treatments, medications, cosmetics, etc. Some people argue that this is a mishandling of animals and should go out of practice, while others believe that such experiments lead up to some significant breakthroughs in science. Whether using test animals is justified or if these practices could be substituted will be discussed in the following essay.
A positive aspect of experimenting with animals is that no humans are being harmed in the process of medical discoveries. Before modern times, doctors would use their patients to try out new medicine, sometimes without asking for their consent. This would lead to unexpected side effects that would harm perfectly healthy patients. An example for that have been experiments with the spinal cord, where children would have to cary from a very early age a device, which in the long run would actually make their bones weaker and they would be crippled for the rest of their lives.
However, it has to be noted that whatever is being tested on another species, might have different effects on humans. For example mice have been vastly used in the medical science as test rats for different drugs, cosmtecis, etc, and tests on them created misleading conslusions. There has been some cases of using a sleep drug that has very effective for the rats, who are generally more hyperactive, but have led to cases of coma in people after using the same dosage of the opiad. Even after such extreme cases, animals are still used in test centres, as unfortunately, until now scientists have not found a better alternative.
In conclusion, while there are attempts to make scientific progress with alternative solutions, the benefits that come with the usage of animals in medicine outweigh the disadvantages.