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Current Ethical Issues in Animal Research

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Current Ethical Issues in Animal Research Research involving animals consistently improves medical progress for more than two centuries. However, for most of that time, it has met with moral objections because of the suffering it can cause the animals. Though animal welfare laws have reduced the number of laboratory animals globally, ethical concerns remain.The word ‘ethics’ is used in many contexts, for the purposes of this essay, “It is an examination of the acceptability of the motives that drive the behaviour of people. ”(Dolan, 1999). Ethical issues in animal research have been discussed frequently in public these few years.

Accurate global figures for animal testing are difficult to obtain. According to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) (2012), 100 million vertebrates are experimented on around the world every year, 10–11 million of them in the European Union. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the total number of animals used in that country in 2012 was almost 950,000, but this figure does not include rats and mice, which make up about 90% of research animals. Reports show that at least 20% of these animals do not receive painkillers and are used in painful experiments. Animal rights advocates are pressing government agencies to impose heavy restrictions on animal research. However, there is a growing concern over the threat restrictions on the use of animals would pose to scientific progress. Whether such experiments should be allowed to continue has become a matter for public debate. There is a spectrum of opinion on whether there is a justification for using animals for our own ends: some people believe that animals have right and it is wrong to use them, whether for food, in research, as beasts of burden, as pets or to fill them as vermin. Another group believes its is acceptable for

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