The data showing the unreliability of animal experimentation and the resultant harms to humans (and nonhumans) undermine long-standing claims that animal experimentation is necessary to enhance human health and therefore ethically justified. Rather, they demonstrate that animal experimentation poses significant costs and harms to human beings. It is possible—as I have argued elsewhere—that animal research is more costly and harmful, on the whole, than it is beneficial to human health.81 When considering the ethical justifiability of animal experiments, we should ask if it is ethically acceptable to deprive humans of resources, opportunity, hope, and even their lives by seeking answers in what may be the wrong place. In my view, it would be better to direct resources away from animal experimentation and into developing more accurate, human-based technologies.
