This week’s topic regarding animal research is a hard one for me…

Question Answered step-by-step This week’s topic regarding animal research is a hard one for me… This week’s topic regarding animal research is a hard one for me because I love animals and can’t stand to see animal abuse. However, this is an issue that I’ve been naïve to because I’m afraid of what I’ll find and see. I know I shouldn’t have that mentality because if everyone thought like me then we would all turn a blind eye to this issue and no one would fight for these poor, helpless animals. The specific research article that I will be discussing is the Philadelphia Study from 1970-1985 at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School by Thomas Gennarelli who conducted experiments on primates to study head injuries (Pence, 2017). For 15 years, Gennarelli produced head injuries to primates in unethical and excruciatingly painful ways in order to study brain damage in humans and thus hope to pave the way for research in finding possible treatments (Pence, 2017). However, tapes of these experiments showed that the treatment of these primates were unnecessary and not following ethical rules and guideline. Tapes showed researches strapping down primates to a table with their heads in a steel cylinder case where a pneumatic hammer would then smash in their heads, all while the primates are not sedated as the videos show them struggling to free themselves from the straps (Pence, 2017). The researchers argues that the primate were sedated which caused them to feel no pain from the impact, but clearly they were not sedated. Other ethical issues involved in this study was how the researcher treated and spoke to these primates. They would call the primates suckers and say things like “You’d better have some axonal damage, monkey” (Pence, 2017). They would even hold up a conscious monkey with broken limbs and laugh at them (Pence, 2017). This treatment is unnecessary, unethical, and clearly not professional in such a research setting. Gennarelli eventually had his researched suspended and was charged for “lack of anesthesia, inadequate supervision, poor training, inferiorveterinary care, unnecessary multiple injuries to the same animals, smoking, statements in poor taste around animals, improper clothing, and overall ‘material failure to comply with the Public Health Service Animal Welfare Policy'” (Pence, 2017). When I read about this study, I felt sick to my stomach and thought about the severe trauma and pain that these intelligent animals endured for years. I understand that this was done for the “good of research” but there were so many ethical issues with these experiments.Things that could have been done differently to avoid these ethical issues is basically addressing all of the accusations he was charged with. The researchers could have sedated these primates with proper anesthesia prior to starting the experiments, provided up-to-date and proper veterinary care as needed, refrained from making unnecessary comments or statements to and around the animals, employed well-trained researchers who followed the ethical guidelines of animal experimentation, and most importantly, conducted the research in a more ethical and less malicious and evil way when it came to inducing head injuries on the primates. Activists argued that after 15 years of Gennarelli conducting these experiments, he had made no progress as the results did not indicate an effective and efficient reproducible model of head injury in humans and they did not add any new and valuable information regarding head injuries (Pence, 2017). Essentially, these animals suffered for years for nothingReferencePence, G. (2017). Medical Ethics: Accounts of Ground-Breaking Cases (8th ed.). McGraw Hill Education. My question is whether you agree on the ehtical dilemma? any questions? please respond in atleast 100 words. Health Science Science Nursing PHIL 434 Share QuestionEmailCopy link Comments (0)