But weren t many treatments we have today developed on animals like polio vaccines, for instance?
In fact, two separate bodies of work were done on polio the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and which did not involve animals, and the subsequent animal tests, in which close to 1 million animals were killed and which the Nobel committee refused to recognise as anything more than wasteful. Also, polio died out just as quickly in areas of the world that did not use the vaccine as in areas that did. However, certainly, some medical developments were discovered through cruel animal tests. But just because animals were used doesn’t mean they had to be used or that primitive techniques that were used in the 1800s are valid today. It’s impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals, because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading results with regard to human health, we’d probably be better off if we hadn’t relied on them.
