In this blog post, we examine how humans have exploited animals under the banner of scientific progress, using the film The Planet of the Apes as a lens. We delve deeply into the question of how far we should consider animal rights and our ethical responsibilities.
In the film Planet of the Apes, advanced genetic engineering is used to enhance the intelligence of apes. Ape technology is developed to train them for space exploration, enabling them to explore the universe in place of humans. One day, an ape goes missing during an expedition. His owner, overcome with worry, ignores the commander’s orders and takes off alone in a pod. Unexpectedly, he arrives on the planet “Ashlar,” thousands of years in the future, and is horrified to discover that humans are now under the domination of apes. Unlike Earth, the apes on this planet possess intelligence and communication abilities similar to humans, yet they treat humans like slaves and act as masters.
After watching this film, I had some reflections. The movie observes humanity from an animal’s perspective, reflecting how humans have excessively exploited animals that cannot speak or properly resist. If we deeply consider the message the director seeks to convey, it might be urging us to open our hearts and carefully re-examine how we have treated animals until now. Humans have never once considered their situation from the animals’ standpoint. Yet this film makes us imagine becoming slaves or playthings like animals, prompting reflection on how we’ve unfairly treated animals for scientific progress behind the conveniences we enjoy daily. It’s time to seriously consider the rights and emotions of animals we’ve overlooked.
First, let us consider what animals are. Answering this question thoroughly would require extensive scientific and philosophical knowledge, but here we will briefly examine the mental lives of animals and what kind of beings they are. Animals are living beings with sensory and perceptual abilities. Sensory ability is the capacity to feel, while perceptual ability refers to the capacity to organize and interpret sensory stimuli, assigning meaning to the environment. Animals also experience emotions such as worry, anxiety, fear, pain, and joy, but compared to humans, they lack sufficient perception or consciousness. Some philosophers have argued that since “language” is essential for forming perceptual abilities, animals without language must necessarily lack such abilities. For instance, it is self-evident that even the most intelligent dolphins cannot write books, nor can the cleverest chimpanzees build airplanes to travel around the world. It is undeniable that humans are the most superior animals on this planet.
However, the issue of humans treating animals cruelly for scientific gain is highlighted through animal experimentation. While animals have been sacrificed for humans since time immemorial, the problem of animal testing was first seriously raised about 100 years ago, emerging alongside humanity’s dazzling scientific progress. Animal testing is broadly divided into two categories: research and experiments using animals for scientific purposes, and education. One category involves research seeking new knowledge about biological processes and functions. The other involves experiments exploring new medical, veterinary, or biological knowledge to enhance the health of humans, animals, and the environment. Estimates suggest that approximately 270,000 animals are sacrificed daily worldwide for animal testing. This means roughly three animals are used every second, and these figures refer solely to vertebrates. Such numbers reveal humanity’s cruelty in sacrificing animals and raise the question of whether we truly need to sacrifice so many. We must also consider whether the animals’ sacrifice is truly proportional to our scientific progress.
Of course, our ability to live longer and use cosmetics with confidence owes something to animal testing. Through animal testing, researchers have often understood the nature of diseases and developed prevention methods. For instance, the polio vaccine, kidney transplants and heart surgery, and treatments for diseases like diabetes and diphtheria were developed with the help of animal testing. Thanks to animal testing, human life expectancy has increased by approximately 28 years, and even today, animal testing plays a crucial role in developing treatments for AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease. Proponents of animal testing cite these significant benefits, emphasizing that it has greatly contributed to the development of techniques and fundamental biological knowledge for treating cancer, heart disease, hemophilia, malaria, and spinal cord injuries.
However, the importance of animal testing may now be a thing of the past. In 1959, Russell and Burch established the 3Rs principle for animal testing, which remains supported as a standard for scientific method application and ethical use, and is adhered to globally through various efforts. The 3Rs principle consists of Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement. Reduction means using fewer animals to obtain the necessary information; Refinement involves improving existing methods to minimize the pain and distress animals experience; Replacement entails utilizing research models that do not use animals. To put these principles into practice, alternatives to animal testing are being developed in multiple directions. Alternatives to animal testing are broadly divided into methods using non-living test systems and those using cell and organ cultures.
First, let’s examine representative methods using non-living materials. These include storing toxicological data in computers to predict the toxicity of specific chemicals, thereby reducing animal testing, and using biosensors that detect biological responses via electrochemical methods. Nanotechnology has even enabled the measurement of changes at the single-cell level. Additionally, researchers sometimes employ statistical techniques that help measure disease spread using comprehensive data. In vitro methods using bacteria or cultured cells and tissues also offer advantages as alternatives to animal testing, being both economical and rapid. One example is pregnancy diagnosis. From the mid-1920s to the early 1960s, pregnancy was diagnosed by injecting a pregnant woman’s urine into rabbits and observing ovarian changes. Today, pregnancy is diagnosed with a simple HCG immunoreaction test.
While animal testing is used in medical procedures and treatment development, it is difficult to confirm its fundamental role in contributing to specific medical advances. Even when researchers claim success through animal testing, this remains unproven. Animals differ from humans and often exhibit different responses to drugs; it has also been revealed that the success rate of animal testing is only 5-25%. Moreover, drugs that pass animal testing can sometimes cause severe side effects in humans. In 1963, research established the correlation between smoking and lung cancer, but animal testing failed to prove this, leading to many deaths from lung cancer. Similarly, although asbestos was identified as a cause of human lung cancer in the early 1940s, animal testing failed to confirm its dangers, delaying regulation.
We can see through the limitations and dangers of animal testing that the number of animals sacrificed does not proportionally contribute to human health advancement or scientific progress. Because of these issues, animal testing is no longer an essential process. While animal testing was useful in the past, the development of alternative methods in the 21st century has made it possible to sufficiently replace it. Furthermore, from a moral standpoint, animals are sentient beings entitled to “equal consideration.” Experiments that cause animals suffering are excessive, and reducing unnecessary animal testing would be desirable in many respects.
