Animal research has contributed to 70 per cent of Nobel prizes for physiology or medicine. Without it, medically we might have been stuck in the Dark Ages. Animals should be used in medical research because it is still the best way of finding out what causes disease, and of knowing whether new treatments will be safe and effective.
The study of animals is a vital part of the research process because it helped scientists to understand how different organs in healthy body works. Also, Animal bodies are similar to human bodies in a way that they perform many vital functions such as breathing, digestion, movement, sight, hearing and reproduction. This helped scientists to understand if any of these organs not working well what possible treatments can be done to treat them. Due to this, advance scientific knowledge about human body was not possible without using animal for medical research.
Animals are used as a model to study disease. Human and animals share hundreds of illnesses. Consequently, animals can act as models for the study of human illness. For example, Dogs suffer from cancer, diabetes, cataracts, ulcers and bleeding disorders such as haemophilia, which make them natural candidates for research into these disorders. Cats suffer from some of the same visual impairments as humans. From such models we learn how disease affects the body, how the immune system responds, who will be affected, and more.
Many Diseases have been cured or being treated today after doing lot of research on animals. Antibiotics, insulin, vaccines for polio and cervical cancer, organ transplantation, HIV treatments, heart-bypass surgery are some of the examples. we should be proud of our scientists; whose work is a hope to those suffering from incurable disorders. It is not only drugs and vaccines. Two weeks ago, researchers in Seattle announced that they had used an electronic brain implant to enable a monkey to move its paralysed limbs, a discovery with the potential to allow severely disabled people to regain movement.
In Conclusion, no one will be happy to use animals if there is no need. It gives no one any pleasure. It is expensive, time consuming, performed under certain regulations. Yet it is best way to find what causes diseases, and what treatments will be safe and effective.