Ethical Dilemma

One ethical dilemma retained my attention. We saw briefly during class a subject regarding animal testing for medical purposes.
Should be allowed to test medical purposes on animal rather than human being?

From Wikipedia, in the United Kingdom there are approximately 45-70 millions cats and 40 millions dogs. It is also estimated that 3,000 cats and dogs are born every day and 4,000 rats every hour (derelictlondon.com). In other words, I would rather say that if one dies spontaneously after a scientist has realized a test, it would not be a huge damage. On the contrary, when results are positive, they can have amazing affects for the human being, in terms of cancer cure for instance. With animal testing we can discover new medicines and treatments to save millions of people from death. It is a real medical breakthrough for humans. To quote the BBC; “ The case for animal experiments is that they will produce such great benefits for humanity that it is morally acceptable to harm a few animals.”
One more obvious counter argument to test medical purposes on animals is there nothing else to test on. Medical research is a difficult and intricate process. The human body is the most complex ‘machine’ and animals are relatively the closest species to us.
I will not perceive the use of animals in research as an ethical issue. Testing animals can take place as long as the animal is not suffering and all the benefits will proceed to human beings and improvement medicine. Testing medical purposes on animal doesn’t mean maltreat them. Nowadays, scientists have accurate tools in order to reduce the pain caused by experiments. Then, not only animals are tested, there is another important alternative: human volunteers. However it should be a highly controlled situation because the issue will be not the same as animals.

Encounter arguments:

Animals should be free, they don’t have to be forced to be experimented on, and they suffer for our own needs to improve the medicine. Testing on animals occurs diseases and illness on them. Animal testing has lead more harm rather than breathtaking discovery in treatments.
Most of tests end up by the death of the animal; it is a fact that becomes increasingly common. Amount of animals that suffer of testing is minimal compared to them who die off. This is more animal torture rather than animal testing.
Nowadays, we have a highly developed technology and computers which allows scientists to copy exactly parts of the human body with 3D graphical models for example. We don’t need any more animals to test on if computers can properly substitute them.
Animals are not humans and completely differ in terms of biological system. Data and tests from animals tested cannot be genuinely accurate because there is no single animal that can reproduce the complexity of the human body in this situation. Just because something had worked on animals does mean it will be work on humans.