HIGHER MAMMALS SUCH AS MONKEYS HAVE RIGHTS AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

The animal testing issue is a topic theme of discussion nowadays. Relatively new ethical and moral ideologies (like vegetarianism and veganism) are sometimes in deep contrast with the scientific method for animal testing. In particular, the use of higher mammals besides other species used as testing animals is controversial.

Perhaps the first objection to their use is the doubt about their rights. We, as a human kind, do have rights (and duties, of course). But how about “them”? In my opinion we can not assure that animals have the same grade of rights as the human beings. Certainly we should not abuse on them, nor torture or kill them without any reason or for mere pleasure, but, juridically speaking, I do not believe they can benefit of rights as every human being does. For instance, the death of an experimental animal can not bring to the incrimination of its experimenters.

Secondly, the attention of public opinion is focused on the direct use of monkeys, baboons, orangutans and other laboratory animals in expertimental testing. According to me, their involvement in tests is crucial to understanding how different pathologies develops in a multi-cellular organism with a complex nervous system that is similar to ours. Without their contribution, scientific tests would be less specific and would not lead to significant discoveries.

In conclusion, I have to admit that, by far, the use of animal testing is still a necessity for the scientific community. Further investigations are necessary to develop a valid and safe animal-free testing method, indeed.