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The one thing that surprised me the most during class was the lack of regulation and knowledge about animal testing. I think it is problematic that society in general seems to have ethical issues with animal testing, but nobody actually cares enough to attempt regulating it. I think part of the scientific communities’ code of conduct should include something about treating lab animals with respect. I believe that animal testing is important to research and that there is currently not a good substitute for it. However, I think it is upsetting that not all labs (and probably not most labs) provide good living conditions for their animals. Also, since there is a moral issue with sacrificing an animal for the greater good I think researchers should make more of an effort to make sure their research is not repetitive so we could limit the amount of animal lives lost.

Another interesting issue which was brought up was the difference between research, testing, and educational animals. Although there are some arguments that could be made for the importance of using animals for education, such as dissection, etc, I think that not enough is gained to warrant the large amount of animals used. Dissecting a frog in middle school is not benefiting society or providing important treatments for humans or animals. Therefore I think it is much more feasible and probably moral to replace educational animals with computer models. However, I think that for testing and research animal models are still important because we need to see how the whole system reacts and that can’t be replicated on a computer model.