In this blog post, we will examine the necessity and ethical issues of animal testing, focusing on examples of advances in brain science, and consider the balance between science and life.
Animal testing has been widely used for a long time in various fields, ranging from natural sciences such as medicine, pharmaceuticals, biology, and space science to applied engineering. Animal experimentation has been an integral part of humanity’s remarkable progress, and for this reason, it continues to this day despite much controversy. In this blog post, we will reconsider the significance of animal experimentation through the history of brain science, one of the most representative fields of animal experimentation.
The study of the brain, commonly referred to as “brain science,” is more accurately called “neuroscience.” Neuroscience is the study of all nervous systems, including the brain. Neuroscience focuses on how we perceive and experience the external environment and how we interact with others. Because of this, neuroscience is closely related to other fields like genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, and pathology.
Brain science started way back in ancient Greece when natural science was just getting started. If you look at human history, you’ll find stories like these. Hippocrates, known as the father of modern medicine, knew of the existence of the cerebrum and believed that the human mind was created in the cerebrum. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato also said in his exploration of the brain and the mind that “reason and intelligence are the mind of God, while appetite and sexual desire are the mind of man and originate in the brain.” The existence of the brain has been known since ancient Greek times, and the first explorations of its functions were conducted then.
However, serious research on the brain did not begin until the 19th century, when its anatomical structure began to be investigated. Among the many experiments conducted in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are many famous ones that are still frequently mentioned today. For example, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s experiment using dogs to discover conditioned reflexes was conducted in 1904, and Hans Berger’s brain wave experiment, which is said to be the first recording of brain waves, was conducted in 1929. The reason why brain science was able to develop little by little in the 20th century was because anatomical approaches to the brain had not been possible before then. Before the 19th century, brain science was conducted on people with severe brain damage. As a result, systematic and gradual progress was not possible. However, with the development of anatomy in the 19th century, brain science began to progress gradually through various experiments using animals.
One example is the experiment conducted by Dr. Camillo Golgi (1843-1926) in Italy. His research team conducted experiments using chimpanzee brains, which they believed to be most similar to human brains, in order to understand the structure of the human brain. The experiment was conducted as follows. First, two flashing light bulbs were placed in front of the chimpanzees, and they were trained to raise their left hand when the left light bulb flashed and their right hand when the right light bulb flashed. Then, part of the chimpanzees’ skulls were drilled and a dye was injected into their brains. The experimenters waited for the chimpanzees to respond to the flashing lights and then ended the experiment. After completing the experiment, the research team euthanized the chimpanzees and removed their brains to investigate the path through which the dye spread. After extensive research, Golzi’s team was able to understand how each part of the brain is connected to each other. As such, brain science, which studies the brain, required an anatomical approach to understand its structure and operating principles, and animal experiments were conducted in every case. Such cases can be easily found not only in brain science but also in other academic fields.
However, can animal experimentation be justified solely on the grounds that it contributes to the advancement of humanity? First, let’s take a closer look at animal experimentation. Animal experimentation refers to experiments or scientific procedures conducted on experimental animals for educational, testing, research, or scientific purposes. It is estimated that more than 300 million vertebrates are used as laboratory animals worldwide. Animal experiments are used not only for pure research to observe genetic characteristics, growth processes, and behavior patterns, but also for xenotransplantation, drug response testing, and toxicological testing. Supporters of animal experimentation argue that the advances in medicine and other industries in the 20th century were made possible by animal experimentation.
I, too, think positively about the benefits that animal experimentation has brought to industry, but I believe that we need to reconsider animal experimentation for the following two reasons. First is the effectiveness of animal experimentation. Supporters of animal experimentation argue that most animal experiments have played a decisive role in the development of industry, but this is far from the truth. Take the field of medical experiments using animals, for example. The antidiarrheal drug Clioquinol passed experiments on rats, cats, and dogs, but in 1976, more than 10,000 people in Japan who took this drug suffered from vision loss, disabilities, and paralysis, and hundreds died. Similarly, Opren, an arthritis treatment that showed no problems in animal testing, caused 61 deaths, and Eraldin, a heart medication, caused 23 deaths. These cases are all due to the fact that humans and animals react differently to certain drugs. Furthermore, only 1.16% of diseases are shared between humans and animals, so the results of animal testing cannot be applied to humans as they are.
The second reason I oppose animal testing is because I believe that animals have an inherent right not to be used in experiments. The history of humanity has moved toward a broader respect and protection of basic human rights. The reason we have moved away from the natural state of survival of the fittest and protect each other’s basic rights is because differences in power do not give anyone the right to violate the essential rights of others. I do not believe that this way of thinking is limited to the human species. I believe that all beings on Earth have the right not to be harmed or exploited by other beings.
If so, is the advancement of human civilization impossible without animal testing? I do not believe that scientific and technological advancement necessarily requires animal testing. There are two main reasons for this. First, modern science and technology have advanced to the point where the raison d’être of animal testing is being questioned. Let us look again at the history of brain science. Until the latter half of the 20th century, brain science, which had been developed based on animal experiments on patients with brain diseases, no longer relied on vivisection. This was due to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. MRI provides information about the desired area and tissue as if the brain had been opened up. The brain structure map established by Dr. Golgi can now be obtained at a higher level in just 10 minutes using MRI. The second reason why animal experiments are not necessarily required is the advancement of clinical trials. As pointed out earlier, drug verification through animal experiments has clear limitations. In an effort to overcome these limitations, experiments on human subjects are being conducted. Clinical trials, which are mainly conducted at hospitals and other institutions and are limited to volunteers, are carried out under very thorough and safe conditions. In other words, the necessary experiments for drugs and other products can be sufficiently conducted through clinical trials on humans, and such trials are necessary to ensure the reliability of research and development.
In this article, we have questioned the significance of animal experimentation based on examples from brain science and reconsidered whether the process is essential for the advancement of humanity. There have undoubtedly been moments in human history when animal experimentation was necessary for our advancement. However, through those past processes, humanity has achieved a level of academic and technological advancement that does not require the use of other animals living on Earth alongside us. Perhaps now is the time to strive to give back to them the technological advances we have received from them.
