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I wish there is an alternative, but as it stands, there is none. The relationship between humans and animals continues to generate discussion.
In most of the interactions between humans and animals, the latter are at a disadvantage. I have read about people that detest eating meats because they see it as injustice to the animal kingdom. However, the majority of the population sees animals as source of protein to nourish the body. I don't have a problem with having protein from meat. If an animal can serve as food for me, I don't see any problem with it serving a role in the innovation of drugs to cure me of diseases.
The world is structured in a way that higher species dominate and control the lower ones. Even in the animal kingdom, some animals feed on the less powerful animals. A few years ago, I sat down, and I was watching my cock playing around. It was a few days to New Year's Day, and there was a plan to kill it and prepare a chicken pepper soup. I imagined what its reaction would be if my plan was revealed to it. I am sure the cock might take me as a betrayal. Because of how emotional I became, I couldn't just kill the cock on the said day. Someone else helped do that.
The same thing goes with administering drugs to laboratory rats and their likes to monitor the efficiency of the drug in performing the intended purposes and also to study the side effects of the drugs. I am sure that if the animals were aware, they would reject going through such a process that will subject them to risk. I always imagine how I would feel if I administered a drug on a rat and, at the end of the day, the rat couldn't survive the effects. I would feel guilty of subjecting the defenseless animal to pain. In the case of having a breakthrough in such a process, I believe that the concerned animal would be proud of assisting mankind in the process of getting a solution to emerging health challenges.
However, the main issue is that of consent. It should have been that animals have a way of consenting to being used as a testing ground for medical innovation. This is difficult to achieve as there is no clear and fluent mode of communication between humans and rats.
As I consider the plights of the laboratory animals, I have to also think of what becomes the future of drug invention in the absence of the present procedure. Many diseases that were death sentences in the past are no more like that because scientists were able to discover the cure through the process of experimenting with their innovations on animals.
To the best of my understanding, there is no alternative to this procedure. I don't think it's fair to use humans to test run the efficacy and side effects of a new drug. Science is growing, and I believe that a time will come when there will be an alternative. Computational techniques shows bright prospects in this regard.