Some people have suggested that using animals in experimentation is unethical since animals cannot "volunteer" to participate. They suggest humans have a moral obligation to be caretakers of our world and not subject animals to suffering. However, others contend that our superior status in the world confers upon us the right to utilize animals to advance our condition.Please react to the two articles on the use of animals in medical research. Do you support or oppose the use of animals in experimentation? Use evidence and please be specific in referencing the articles to support your position!
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Nathan Doucette
ReplyDeleteI support that animals should be used in medical research. When reading the Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading article, I understood where the author was coming from. It is true that testing on animals can be misleading because they react to things differently then humans do. Like when he mentioned that “the antiviral drug failuridine seemed safe in animal trials yet caused liver failure in seven of 15 humans taking the drug (five of these patients died as a result of the medication, and the other two received liver transplants).” It is tragic sometimes the results of drugs that end up harmful to humans, but at least they weren’t testing on humans in the first place. If they didn’t use animals for the experiment, then many more people would have died in the development of the drug. And I’m sure that they did a lot of tests before they released the drugs. I also agree with this article that results on animals should not be compared to a human, just because it works on them doesn’t mean it will work on humans. So what they should do is test on animals like they are now, but when they think they have it, and then try it on a human to see if it has similar results. Then when looking at the Animal Research Is Vital To Medicine article, it was interesting to see how animal experimentation was useful after reading the other article. Like when this author said “Animal research not only produced new vaccines for the treatment of infectious disease, it also led to the development of antibacterial and antibiotic drugs.” Also he mentioned that open heart surgery and the replacement of heart valves emerged from years of animal research. If they never learned how to do this through animals, then many people would die during the time it took them to learn how to do it on animals, and people with bad hearts would have died if doctors never learned how to do the surgeries. It says that it saves 440,000 people every year in the US. The article goes on and on about how many great discoveries were found by using animals for experimentation. Again I understand that humans and animals function differently, but I think that using animals for experimentation is still a great way to further our medical research.
Some people argue that animal experimentation is vital to the development of disease treatments and immunization discoveries. However, other, better methods of experimentation are available, including: epidemiological studies, clinical intervention trials, human tissue and cell cultures, biopsy, and autopsy studies. Often times, viruses and medications would have different results on humans than they do on the animals they're tested on anyway. Some species have significant differences in how they deal with things. It was once said that tobacco smoke does not cause lung cancer after numerous animal experiments. Also, the way the drug is administered in the experiment can alter the results and cause false findings. Some drugs that were found to be safe in animals caused severe and sometimes fatal side-effects in humans. By using different animals in different experiments, results can be found to support almost any theory. Researchers have used animals to prove that cigarettes both do and do not cause cancer. Besides all of this, recent studies have showed that animals really do have emotions which proves that using them in experiments is unethical. I think with all the technology and advances we have in the world today, we could find a much more efficient way to experiment than with the use of animals.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading both articles, I find that there needs to be a balance between the rights of animals, and the need for advancement in the field of medical research. There is certainly no reason that we should ever take animal experimentation lightly, such as has been done with testing cosmetics and such, but that should not preclude responsible research with appropriate animal experimentation in a well-designed research project.
ReplyDeleteIt is indisputable that much has been gained throughout the recent decades with the help of animals. While there have indeed been incidents where the results of the animal experimentation have not matched the results when applied to humans, they often appear to be as a result of a poorly designed experiment, rather than a mismatch of some kind between animal and human physiologies. Additionally, as science has vastly increased its knowledge base, such mistakes are more easily avoided.
It is easy to let emotions and/or business interfere with true scientific research. It sometimes appears that animal rights activists will make arguments almost for the sake of argument in a desperate attempt to squash the process - arguments that almost always prove to be fabricated or partial truths. As for the business "research" - the tobacco industry, and perhaps even the pharmaceutical industry as well, results of scientific experimentation can certainly be said to have been twisted to obtain desired results in order to increase profit. However, honest, well-designed scientific research that focuses on results over profit and genuinely accepts factual results as they occur, is the key to medical progress. This MUST include, in my opinion, responsible animal testing in order to improve the quality of the research - thereby continuing to improve the quality of life for all of humanity. Had we not done this in our past, life as we know it today would not exist.
I would have to agree that the use of animal research is a positive, because it allows humans to prepare themselves for any medical advancements in society. Although I wish we could find a way to perform experiments without harming any animals, it is impossible. The use of animals for experimental use is crucial to humans living long, healthy lives. For example, according to the article stating that animal research is vital to medicine, animal research has led to producing vaccines for infectious diseases as well as developing antibacterial and antibiotic drugs. Some humans live on antibiotic drugs from day to day to keep them fighting certain diseases. Without animal research these humans would not have survived until now. At a very small age, children begin receiving vaccinations for multiple infectious diseases and without these vaccinations we could catch serious, deadly illnesses. Animal research has protected us from these deadly diseases and has kept us healthy. Research on animals has also led us to different types of surgeries, such as open heart surgery, liver transplants, etc. People have heart attacks every day, and without these surgeries they would not survive. Animal research has brought these surgeries into our lives and without experimentation on these animals the majority of humans would not be living today. Although, the argument that animal research is a waste is convincing, it is not persuasive enough to lead me to believe that it is not crucial to our survival as humans. If you think about it, if there wasn't animal research and experimentation, every human would catch some type of deadly disease within their lifetime.
ReplyDeleteKeith Thompson
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the two articles about animal testing, my view has not changed. I still believe that animal experimentation should be used. Too many advancements have come from animal experimentation to stop using it now. Vaccines for some of the most devastating diseases that afflict the human species have come from extensive testing on animals. Cholera and anthrax are only two of the diseases that were studied in animals. These studies allowed the future creation of vaccines that worked in the human population and saved countless lives.
Despite its benefits animal testing is not perfect. Not all animals are similar enough to humans to respond to medicine in the same way as people would. This is why animal testing is done on many species. For example, the nervous system of mice may be different from humans but the overall ageing progression in mice is almost the same as humans. It is these kinds of similarities that allow something like a growth hormone to be tested on mice and still provide reliable results.
The article “Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading” points out many failures in drugs that were tested on animals. The harmful side affects that arose in the human testing were not predicted in the animal testing. At the time of the drugs release all of the research pointed to it being safe. These failures are unavoidable because the only biological systems that will show results that are 100% the same as in humans are humans. Any ethical problems with testing on animals are thrown out the window when the prospect of testing completely untested drugs on people is the other option.
The benefits that animal testing and experimentation have provided the human race are priceless. No other reasonable way to test the drugs existed and animal testing provided the most efficient way to get vaccines and cures developed. Animal testing has provided many benefits to the human race and there is no reason to think that it will stop being useful in the future.
In the world of medicine, you can never tell what's going to happen when you give somebody a new drug. That's why scientists test their new expiraments and ideas on animals to see if there are any major side effects to what they are trying to get at. Testing on animals is very necessary in the advancement of modern medicine. Testing on animals has probably saved millions of peoples lives and many people would not be alive today. Louis Pasteur's work on animals saved many people that had and could have had cholera. If it wasn't for mice then we would not have the amazing antibiotic penicillin which has alone probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Animal expiramentation allows for scientists to develop and study what new drugs can do to an animals body and they then hope that it has the same effect on humans. Testing on animals could one day be the key to human survival.
ReplyDeleteThe two articles make dueling empirical claims. In “Vital” the author says that “there are no basic differences between the physiology of laboratory animals and humans.” In “Wasteful and Misleading” we are told that animal biochemistry is bafflingly dissimilar to humans’, rendering it utterly useless as an analogue. This is the nub of their disagreement.
ReplyDelete“Wasteful and Misleading” features some sobering numbers about the accuracy of animal tests. The author makes an argument from complexity: “A stimulus applied to one particular organ system perturbs the animal’s overall physiological functioning in myriad ways that often cannot be predicted or fully understood. Such uncertainty severely undermines the extrapolation of animal data of other species, including humans.”
According to “Vital”, “Both [humans and animals] control their internal biochemistry by releasing endocrine hormones that are all essentially the same.” A similar correspondence is found in other organ systems. Nor does the author think biochemical differences are dealbreakers for many tests – the animal body simply “provides a means to study a particular procedure.”
I’m not a medical expert so I cannot evaluate most of these claims. The author of “Wasteful and Misleading” has a more difficult job, however, because he must prove that no animal test is useful. The ethical qualms about testing very unconvincing, so if a test has a small probability of improving human quality of life, it’s worth doing.
Evolved humans feel a natural sympathy for those of their own kind. Relationships with members of one’s social group are evolutionarily more important than relationships with potential food. We can also benefit from interactions with strangers – thus all fellow humans, in our minds, reside in a charmed moral circle.
Where to draw the line? An animal test which shows any promise of relieving human suffering is worth doing. Most people’s utility functions are maximized by a great deal of animal suffering – any enjoyment of modern amenities is environmentally devastating. (For example, many acres of land are needed to support the average American's consumption.) Furthermore, the public simply isn’t mobilized against animal testing – aside from a few moralizers, most of us don’t care. It’s the evolutionary norm. So, if there are people willing to do the experiments, why not?
I'm not coldhearted enough to contend that animal suffering can be completely ignored - there is a baseline sympathy. For example, testing caustic hair products on animals is excessive.
For important medical research, however, the verdict is obvious.
After reading both articles, I would have to agree that animal research is vital to medicine. I think that testing animals first is extremely important in the development of medicine. Without testing animals first, we never know what the medicine can do to the human consuming it. Many good discoveries have come from animal testings, such as the vaccine for Hib, and has also led to the production of antibacterial and antibiotic drugs. Research on animals has led to many other breakthroughs which have helped humans greatly. For example, after 20 years of research on animals, open heart surgrey has saved an average of about 440,000 people a year, just in the US alone. I agree with Aimee that animal research sounds very wrong, but I believe that it is the the best way for research to be done without hurting a human along the way.
ReplyDeleteJulie Do
ReplyDeleteAnimal testing is a very useful and positive technique in trying to discover new cures for diseases. It had helped us find causes of and vaccines, for plenty of diseases that are infectious. Not only did it do this but it had also led to the development of antibacterial and antibiotic treatments. Other than developing medicines from these animal experiments, it had also helped us in the surgical area. For instance, open heart surgery which helps save about 440,000 U.S. citizens alone was a benefit from this and another benefit is the advancement of kidney transplants. Sure, animal testing can be bad in a way that sometimes results can differ and the harming of these poor animals. But this isn't only benefitting us humans but it does also help find cures for these animals also. And it is not like we are harming these animals for entertainment but it for a helpful, reasonable, and medical reason.
Lauren Doucette
ReplyDeleteAfter Reading both articles I support the use of animals in experimentation. I do however; understand the other side’s perspective but I definitely do not feel the same. I think that it is better to use animals in these experiments rather than human beings. At times, these experiments can be dangerous or have negative results ending in death. Even though I am an animal lover I think that it would be best to have an animal go through these things rather than a human being. I think it would be worse to jeopardize a human beings life. Also, the animals that are used in these experiments aren’t just normal household pets they are mostly rodents. I do think that testing animals is very important in the development of medicine. Testing animals, allows us as humans to make many new discoveries in the medical field. Experimenting with animals both has its faults and successes but there will always be a huge divide on opinions on this topic. In the article Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading it states that “stress on animals in laboratories can increase susceptibility to infectious disease and certain tumors as well as influence levels of hormones and antibodies, which in turn can alter the functioning of various organs”. In this article it also discusses how different species provide conflicting results. Of course, when doing experiments like this there are going to be some conflicts but, in any experiment there is the possibility of running into problems. But overall I feel as if using animals in experiments is very vital. Lastly, in the article Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading there are a variety of times when it says how animal studies appeared safe but later proved to be dangerous to people. Again, I see how this can be a problem, but I truly feel that the majority of these experiments are successful. For example, in the article Animal Research is Vital to Medicine it clearly states that “Experiments using animals have played a crucial role in the development of modern medical treatments, and they continue to be necessary as researchers seek to alleviate existing ailments and respond to the emergent of new disease.” It also goes on to discuss how animal research not only produces new vaccines but it also leads to development of antibacterial and antibiotic drugs. The research on animals has made open heart surgery a routine and allows people to live there life longer. I do feel that animals should not be killed in order for research. However, in the end, I think that animal experimentation is very vital for the development of medicine. If they come up with other successful ways for experimenting with medical techniques without the use of humans or animals I would be totally for it, but until then I think that animals are sufficient.
Rebecca Remillard
ReplyDeleteAlthough many of my classmates feel differently, I believe that animal testing is NOT vital to medicine. There is no denying that it has led to new vaccines and antibiotic drugs, however, "research with animals is but one of several complementary approaches," states "Vital".
There are other methods of research that have proven just as invaluable to medicine as animal testing. Using human tissue, autopsy studies, and cell cultures is often more accurate than studying animals becasue there are significant differences between the species that can suggest false information.
As humans, we have the power to do what we wish as far as animal testing is concerned. Yet, looking beyond the fact that animals cannot volunteer to be a part of research, they also often fail to predict the toxic effects of drugs. "Wasteful" states: "Important medical advances have been delayed because of misleading results derived from animal experiments."
The tug of war battle over animal research will continue for some time. I'm not sure if there is a clear line between right or wrong here. Being the superior species, I just feel as if we could find a superior way to test medicine, that doesn't include innocent animals.
I am against animal testing. I feel it is cruel to use animals for experiments, it's torture. From the article against testing there were many statistics showing that the results are faulty and unreliable. So, if the information isn't really helping us, why put innocent animals through it? Many animals don't respond to drugs like we do and the results have caused people to die because of it. We have other ways to test drugs that are more relevant to humans.
ReplyDeleteBesides the obvious facts, I also feel that people are selfish. We don't take in to consideration that animals deserve to be treated fairly as well. Just because they can't talk shouldn't mean that that don't have a say in what happens to them. I realize we are at the top of the food chain and need animals to feed ourselves, but even in that situation animals are treated unfairly. We have found so many ways to beat death. We have cures for all different diseases, but we still want more. People have to die eventually and we all cant live forever. It seems that all this new technology has made life better, but in my opinion, its only prolonged it. There are so many elderly people who are in pain and are being kept alive against their own will. I shouldn't be bringing in religion, but if God wants us to go, we should. I think most of the diseases we have were caused by ourselves in the first place. We have to draw a line somewhere, animal testing isn't going to solve all of our problems.
After reading these two articles my view point is more clear to me and i believe more in experimenting with animals than i did. Experimenting with animals gives us more knowledge of different viruses and diseases, and also helps us in finding vaccines to cure humans from those diseases. Throughout time experimenting on animals has given us the knowledge on different medical illnesses and questions including heart disease, meningitis, open heart surgery, kidney failure and many others. In other words doing experiments on animals and research can lead to new discoveries and which could then benefit all mankind.
ReplyDeleteMolly Savard
ReplyDeleteI was unsupportive of animal testing prior to reading these articles, and after reading them I retain my opinion, but for a different reason. Although I still have a problem with the questionable ethics involved with animal testing, I have learned that there are more significant and scientific reasons as to why animal testing is redundant and unnecessary. The article “Animal Research Is Vital to Medicine” justifies its argument only with examples of medical advances from animal testing in the past. In retrospect, animal testing has aided the development of numerous important conclusions and useful drugs; however, the issue is now one of the present.
As technology evolves, our methods of testing the effects of diseases and treatments should evolve as well. As stated in the article “Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading,” if animal testing were outlawed, scientists would be forced to come up with other effective ways of performing such research. The results from animal research are, in many cases, irrelevant, as humans and animals often respond differently to certain diseases or chemicals. Since “animal ‘models’ are, at best, analogous to human conditions,” animal testing should not be relied on, or even performed, for conclusive evidence. If the tests produce poor results every time, the tests are futile, and result only in the suffering of research animals.
Animal Testing has been, and will continue to be essential to the production of new medicines and the advancement of science. History is on the side of animal testing, there has been numorous scientific advancments that pay there respects to animal testing. If pasteuer hadnt tested his theories about micro-organisms, medicine couldve been set back decades. The other article sites how animal testing can be misleading. I think this is a valid point in some cases, but animal testing has also become an essential part of the scientific process. Animal testing should never be the only test done on a drug or something that will be used on a human, but it should certainly be part of the testing process.
ReplyDeleteApril Daugherty
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with Danny that the use of animal test will continue to help the advancements of science and new medicines. I do think that it is unfortunate that some animals do suffer from trials but I do believe that it is better that it is an animal instead of a human being. Yes not all of our body functions are the same and we might not react to the medicines the same as the animals tested but they are usually pretty close. While reading both articles I noticed that the one that supported animal testing showed a lot more cases and facts of how many people they have saved and how they have decreased the amount of deaths in certain diseases. The other article only stated a few ways that their new methods work but there were less statistics showing there "success" with their methods. Like Danny stated many other test should be done other then just on animals to make sure the drug is safe for human but animals are a vital part to making sure its safe. The result are larger and provide more of and impact with the use of animal research.
Alyssa Musket
ReplyDeleteIn response to earlier posts such as the one by Denise Potvin, I second that there needs to be a delicate, responsible balance maintained in the field of animal research. While there have been past examples where animals have been misused and mistreated in the name of science that does not have to be the case. Ultimately, I believe that it is necessary to use animal research as a means of furthering our own understanding of the world.
Let’s look at the research. While it is possible that we may have discovered vaccination without the experiments Pasteur conducted using animals, I believe it a safe bet to say that without animals, it would have been a long time before that happened. When humans did not understand their own bodies, treatments that would be considered cruel and unusual such as bleeding people who were ill were used. Humans began to understand their bodies only after scientists like Galen used animal dissection to get a deeper comprehension of how bodily parts pieced together. There is no doubt in my mind that animal research has helped us cross leaps and bounds in the scientific field.
But that’s not to say that I think we should go crazy experimenting on animals. Studies need to be well-organized, structured, and with the intent to treat the animals in some manner of respect. ‘Wasteful’ was not wrong in saying that the stress state of an animal when not purposefully induced can easily affect hormone output and then possibly the results of the experiment. It is in the scientists best interests to treat the animals well.
Animal research is not the only means we have to understanding our world today. With newer technologies developing, there are other routes. However, many of these technologies stemmed from earlier processes done with animal research leading me to believe it is still a necessary evil in today’s scientific processes.
Hi Everyone,
ReplyDeleteI received this e-mail from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) a while ago. Ms. Potvin kindly presented her view above concerning the animal rights groups (Thanks for your contribution!). I thought you might be interested in their view in their own words.
In NO WAY am I suggesting that you donate to or join PETA. This is strictly for those interested in the viewpoint of this organization.
Dear Friend,
As I write to you, countless dogs, cats, mice, rabbits, and other animals are suffering in outdated and unnecessary animal tests. This year alone, more than 100 million individual animals in North America will be killed in these cruel tests.
Since our founding nearly 30 years ago, PETA has made groundbreaking progress in our fight to stop all animal tests. With your help today, we can accomplish twice as much for those suffering behind the closed doors of laboratories. Thanks to a group of generous PETA donors, online donations received through our special "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge over the next month, up to a maximum of $250,000, will be matched dollar for dollar!
People of conscience have always opposed needless and cruel experiments on animals, but thanks to PETA's hard work and the dedication of our supporters, animal testing has been laid bare as junk science—of no benefit to anyone except the profiteers who make money from it.
When you give during the "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge, your donation will be worth twice as much to PETA and the animals we are working tirelessly to save.
By donating today to have your gift and impact doubled, you will help answer the cries of the millions of individual animals killed in North American laboratories every year, including the following animals:
Dogs who are poisoned by toxic pesticides.
Mice who are put in water chambers and forced to swim until they drown from exhaustion.
Rabbits who have chemicals poured into their eyes.
Pigs who are shot and burned by the U.S. Army for medical trainings.
Monkeys who have metal screws drilled into their skulls.
These experiments are not only cruel but also unreliable, dangerous, and bad science. We know that non-animal tests are less expensive and that they are better at protecting human health. The U.S. government's own scientific advisory board, the National Academy of Sciences, has concluded that many animal tests are useless and should largely be replaced by superior non-animal test methods. But even with that recommendation, animal testing continues, and animals whose minds and bodies are being shattered in laboratories desperately need our help.
PETA—and supporters like you—are often the only hope for these helpless animals. Our undercover investigations into vivisection facilities have exposed their horrors for public scrutiny. Our negotiations with corporations like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have spurred them to adopt cruelty-free policies and practices and compelled hundreds of others to give up animal testing forever. Our whistleblower program and our shareholder activism are also helping to hold corporate animal abusers accountable and save animals' lives.
But as long as any company, university, or government blinds, poisons, maims, tortures, and kills animals, our job isn't done. We urgently need your support to keep this fight going strong.
Please make a generous gift during this special online challenge today to help us permanently end the senseless abuse of animals in laboratories.
With your immediate help, we can save animals from cruel and painful deaths in laboratories.
Kind regards,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
President
P.S. There is no justification for another dog, cat, rabbit, monkey, pig, or other animal to suffer and die for pointless chemical, cosmetics, pesticide, or food-additive tests. With your help, PETA has the power to end these experiments. Please help us double our resources during this special "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge by making a generous gift today!
I firmly believe that animal research is quite vital to medicine. I believe that doay, the most important science to us is the understanding of our environment. I'm personally fascinated by how stuff works and why it does certain things so I like physics which is an understanding of the laws of nature and such. The most practical applications of science are self-nuturing procedures that higher our understanding of nature and prepare us for anything nature can hit us with. The most useful application of this modern science in self-preservation is to understand viruses and diseases and learn how to stave them off. The most effective way is by vaccines and antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteLouis Pasteur's was the first scientist to closely study diseases in animals. His famous discovery was that he could harness weak doses of a virus to boost immunity (vaccine). Since then, there have been a countless number of vaccines created do to animal testing. This utilization of animals was crutial to discovering these vaccines. A common rebuttlement is that scientists could've found more efficient ways to find cures for illnesses but let me ask, how else could we have discovered vaccines?
There are multiple cases in which animal testing has bettered society. Hib used to kill 800 children a year but a new vaccine prepared by rabbits and mice lowered the rate by 70%. There are more examples but this was just one that I found quite nice.
The basic bottom line is, as the world changes, retro viruses keep changing, and new diseases keep popping up. The only way to protect ourselves is to isolate, identify and create a vaccine based off of animal experiments for ourselves.
One last thing that I'd like to rebuttle is the argument that humans and other animals are not alike and so performing experiments on animals tells us nothing important about what it would do for animals. I can see where the misconceptions come from since a human and rat are genetically different and don’t look alike. The really interesting thing though is that we actually are extremely similar. We all have the same generic body structure and organic makeup, we all have a heart, brain, skeleton, lungs, skin, liver, kidneys, feet, eyes, nose, ears, etc. so when we test an organism we are getting a good idea of what it would do to an organism like ourselves whether we are a rat or not. The fact that we are similar has helped us learn about different procedures and things such as heart transplants/ surgeries on cats, and kidney dialysis procedures. You can look at it backwards, inside-out, and upside-down, but animal testing is vital to human survival and evolution.
*shirley pouliot
ReplyDeleteI think that animal research is necessary becausse without it how would we be able to find cures for humans today. Animals are made mostly alike like us and they help us figure out alot of things that we would never know. We have gotten all the vaccines from doing research on animals. without these vaccines people would die and even know death can occur from these tests its a better chance then not doing any testing to cure all the diseases that are out there now. I think that there is other ways to do research with all of the other technologys out there and we shouldnt focus everything on animals, there should be an extent to which we do the research but i think that animal research is necessary because doing this research helps us find cures for diseases that kill humans and other things that can help out humans with things that could kill them, not necessarily diseases but heart problems and other organs.
Richard Votta
ReplyDeleteI think it is necessary to a certain extent. We need to experiment on animals for medicines and surgeries but we shouldn't experiment on animals just for makeup and products like that. But there are certain people that believe we should not experiment on animals for any reason which is rediculous. We need to experiment on animals to see if it works, we can not do that to humans unless they volenteer, but we are the dominat species
Although I don't approve animal testing because I do think that it is cruel and wrong that we use these animals because we consider them lesser than ourselves I do believe that it is vital to medicine. From animal testing we can get so much vital information, like how to do heart procedures and how medicines will effect us and so much more that we really can't find any other way. I don't approve of animal testing on things like cosmetics because those aren't vital for us to live but for medical research I think that it is unavoidable.
ReplyDeleteI believe that humanistic psychology is the most logical of the several psychology schools. Humanistic psychology stresses the conscious experiences of the patients- some thing can be observed, recorded, felt, remembered. This is greatly different than those that focus on the unconscious, something that si elusive, never definite, and always open to interpretation. The conscious is something that can be experienced, and I believe this is important when studying psychology. Humanistic psychology stresses that self-determination, free will, and the importance of choice are key in human behavior.
ReplyDeleteI believe that all people have the capability of leading their life any way they want to. The freedom of choice allows a bright kid to become a drug dealer, or someone with a not-so-great living situation to grow up and be a CEO of a large company some day. Behaviorists believed that human behavior was shaped and maintained by environmental causes. If this is true, then should children born into poor families stay poor forever? Should children born into a rich, successful family automatically be money savvy and know how to handle business? I believe that the humanistic psychology is the most accurate because people have a choice. People have self-determination, free will, and can do whatever they feel is right. The humanistic approach is a much more modern take on psychology.
oops. meant to post this one.
ReplyDeleteAnimal testing CAN be a vital tool to modern medicine, but there are many other different methods scientists could use. As the article written against the use of animal testing stated, not all tests are conclusive, and some have even killed humans. Not all animals have the same body structure as humans, so I don’t believe that they should be tested on. How is it guaranteed that someone that works on a lab rat will work on me? I don’t see the relevance. Almost everyone in the class says it’s vital to medicine, but I believe that a line needs to be drawn. How many innocent rabbits, mice, and dogs are going to die after being tested on before you get the perfect mascara that makes your lashes look “voluminous”? Innocent animals are killed so that humans can improve their appearance. Last time I checked, I wouldn’t volunteer to be a test subject for a makeup company so girls around the world can have bright red lips. There needs to be a line drawn somewhere. As much as I stress this, I admit it is hard to draw exactly where that line should go. Given, there have been many medical advances thanks to animal testing. Quite a few of those advances were a while ago, and we now have new and better technology. Animal testing should be used as a last resort; after all other means of testing have been exhausted. If we are putting all this money into funding colleges for doing new researcg abd finding new and exciting technologies, why not use it?? We have tortured innocent animals long enough. The letter from PETA further proves this. Mice put in tanks of water and force to swim until they drown? Since WHEN is this new information? I think everyone understands the concept that you can’t swim forever, and eventually you will stop. There needs to be stricter guidelines set on how animal testing should be used. I believe the frequency that it is being used for non-vital experiments is ludicrous.