ANALYSIS OF WHY ARE ANIMALS UED IN RESEARCH

In the article Why Are Animals Used in Research? , the author highlights the issue of
the importance of animal research on human beings. He claims that animal research
brings significant effects on preventing infectious diseases that can cause death on
human beings. Words such as healthier, eliminating and contributed reflect his tone of
supportive as he stressed the positive elements.

The author is writing this article to inform the reader why animals are used in the
research. He is also trying to convince the people in the research field to continue using
animals as a research study based on several reasons such as most animals
experience only minimal pain or brief discomfort when they are used in research and
only a small fraction of animals do experience acute or prolonged pain during
experiment. The intended audience is the public and also the group of people who
involve in the animal research. He wants the reader to know why animal should be used
in the study in order to find a cure to save human beings.

The author then presents two arguments to support his own point of view on this issue.
His first claim that by studying animals, the technique is a way safer and more effective
instead to use it first in human beings. This argument however based on society deems
or in other word, particularly opinion. The second claim that it is impossible to replicate
human beings hence animals offer experimental models. He stated some biological
facts, however there is no source that supports the facts. He did stated that some
animals have biological similarities to humans for particularly good models for specific
diseases, expecting the author to include an support such as research findings or case
studies.

The author has supplied us with several types of supporting details throughout his
article. He uses example, research finding and statistics to support his argument. He
also makes extensive reference to the 1988 Animal Welfare Enforcement Report by the
Department of Agriculture. However, there are many flaws in his way of reasoning it. He
gives us an example but he is not giving us the sources of the example. As we did not
know his background, so we cannot assume he is an expert in this animal research
field. For instance, in paragraph 5 he is also giving us many statistics but none of them
come with the sources of the statistics as he keeps using the word estimated. So in our
point of view, the data may be just come from him because he do not mention the
sources of the statistics thus making it a weak support.

In the terms of relevance, we think that all the supports in this article is relevant as they
are directly related to the authors argument. The authors argument about most animals
experience only minimal pain when they are used in research has objectivity as the
support consist of research finding from the Department of Agriculture. However, other
supports seem to be subjective because they are only based on the writers personal
thought with unsupported opinion. We also think that the article is less of completeness
as the author does not provide us any adequate support and overcomes the opposing
point which is why animal are not used in research. Therefore, the article is lack of
credibility and many of the authors points can be questioned of.

The author generally appears to be inductive in his reasoning, as he provides all the
specific statistics to support as many of animals coming from breeding colonies in the
United States as these animals being bred specifically for research and other being
acquired from pounds. In paragraph V the author includes several estimated data,
percentage and also year that lead to a logical generalization.

The stated main idea can be identified on the very first sentence of the article, that is;
human beings use animals for a wide variety of purposes, including research.

Based on paragraph VII, two inferences can be made. Firstly animal research solved
the problem of experiments related to diseases. Second, animal research alleviating
human suffering. In conclusion to this paragraph, animal research contributes to a large
scale of recovering human health. A relatively small number of laboratory animals may
experiences acute pain during experiments, but is justified by the magnitude of the
problem are designed to solve.

In summary, although the author managed to show some validity and credibility in some
of his claims, his overall argument about why animals are used in research are weak
and unsound due to the lack of strong support. His article is also lack of completeness
as he does not provide an adequate support to overcome the opposing thought about
this issue.