Animal testing is unreliable and unnecessary

The findings of animal studies are unreliable. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has concluded that animal experimentation does not contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge in any way. Most experiments on animals are not relevant to human health. Many are undertaken out of curiosity and do not even pretend to hold promise for curing illnesses. The media, experimenters, and lobbying groups exaggerate the potential of animal studies in finding new cures. They mislead people to think that animal studies have a human benefit.^[1] Another related argument is that because animal tests are unreliable, they make those human trials all the riskier. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has noted that 95 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials.^[1] Similarly, a 2015 study conducted by neurologist Aysha Akhtar demonstrated that animal studies lack reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology. She also found that animal experimentation significantly harms humans through misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and the direction of resources away from more effective testing methods. Overall, the study suggests that the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits. Resources would be better invested in developing human-based testing methods.^[2] Because animal experimentation does not have a substantial human benefit and harms humans, it is not ethical to use animals for research purposes.