Animal Model Use: Understanding the Pros and Cons
It is clear that animal testing has greatly contributed to the development and furthermore enhancement of medicine administered to humans. However, the FDA (Food Drug Administration) has taken steps to change the process of validating the safety of drugs within and after its development without heavily relying on the testing of animals. Significant approaches as to how this can be achieved included the use of human organoid/human chip technologies, which would help understand human responses to the drugs in development (Ingber, 2025). The hiccup in the technological human organoid/chip approach is that confirming its validity is a tedious project, which means the launch for this technology to take over instead of animal testing is not ideally attainable within the next few years. In this essay, I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of using animal models for drug development.
Strengths that resulted in the use of animal testing includes the subjects of enhancement of veterinarian science, the discovery of medicinal breakthroughs within human diseases and screening of drug toxicity. The use of animal models has significantly impacted the training and overall medicinal growth within veterinarian science. To further elaborate, there are more opportunities for upcoming veterinarian specialists that can contribute to the techniques and treatments utilized to care for pets, livestock, and other wildlife (Thompson-Iritani & Newsome, 2025). The human body is full of complex systems with uniqueness to disease and all sorts of medical conditions. With the use of animal testing, laboratories are exposed to a slightly different system that they can study and utilize to try to understand the complexities of human biology without directly harming humans. Animal testing has allowed researchers to build treatments for humans that have heart disease, cancers, and much more, all from animal models (Thompson-Iritani & Newsome, 2025). Another strength to animal testing would be the steps of clinical trials to ensure the safety of a drug before it is administered to the public. Testing the drugs in development on animals can potentially show any abnormal effects to their organ systems, which helps identify how the drug can be improved or scraped completely.
Weaknesses that are reflected in the use of animal models include ethical concerns, the validity of animal vs. human drug effectiveness, and laboratory conditions differing from realistic human conditions. Ethical considerations are significant to how animal testing is viewed by the world. There are plenty of platforms in the media that degrad the idea of animal testing and its safety to the animals as well as humans (Thompson-Iritani & Newsome, 2025). This has led to an uproar of mistrust of animal testing to the public, and attempts to combat the mistrust include the placement of the “3R’s” (replacement, reduction, and refinement). The effectiveness of these animal tested drugs is a major concern under the subject of complex human diseases and how it is induced in animals. Typically, the diseases are artificially induced meaning that there is not a completely natural response as to how drug responses will be reflected in humans (Akhar, 2015). When animals are used for the testing of drugs, they are placed in captivity where they are isolated, fed a certain amount, and ultimately exposed to a controlled environment. Laboratory animals are not put under the distress or conditions of the outside world (like humans), which means that testing may produce some inaccuracies in effectiveness because of the unrealistic conditions (Akhtar, 2015).
Animal testing, a method used to test the safety of products for human use, has been under an investigation of possible reduction over the last few years. Steps toward the development of advanced alternatives have been taken to potentially cut out animal testing altogether, such as the use of 3D organoids and AI systems. In this essay, I will address how these unique approaches are of utilization and its limitations.
Microfluidic organs-on-chips and 3D organoids are able to utilize iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) because iPSCs basically convert into special cells like neurons which help the researchers to connect their genetic make-up to humans instead of animals. Organ-on-chips, which mimic the conditions of a human organ, can be used as stimulants for blood flow or even nourishment exchanges. 3D organoids are made up of iPSC cells which create a version of an organ that displays tissue arrangement and functions of said organs. Both of these advances are able to form a more accurate human cell environment because the metabolism/gene make-up similarities compared to animals.
The use of computational models and AI systems have been utilized to understand potential toxicity results with the help of clinical trials, general toxicology reports, and other resources. These technological systems are able to put together pieces of data to discover a pattern of biological responses for new drugs or products. For skin sensitization developments, computational models were utilized by pulling data from data sets that report tested chemicals on humans and animals and their reactions, which are used to build predictability outcomes.
Following the advantages to the use of these methods, there are some limitations to mention; the biggest one being validation of these methods and if they are reproducible (Kwon,2026). Specifically looking into the organ-on-chips and 3D organoids, it can be gathered that they can’t exactly copy an organ and all its processes because they are influenced by hormones and feedback loops within metabolic states, which has a uniqueness that isn’t reproducible. Another limitation to highlight would be computational models having the potential incapability of predicting responses if the data sets are incomplete or of bad quality.
In conclusion, the use of organ-in-chip systems and 3D organoids have so much to offer to the future of human health and have the potential to heavily reduce the act of animal testing. The use of computational models and AI systems have paved a way to furthering technologies to obtain predictions of drug reactions within humans. However, more work is needed to be done to validate these advances for the main reason of their moderately unreliable replicability.
Kwon, D. (2026). The age of animal experiments is waning. Where will science go next? Nature, 650(8103), 812–814. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00563-3
- DOI https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00563-3
- Kwon, 2026
Ingber, D. (2025, July 16). FDA Announces Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing. Will That Work? The Scientist; The Scientist Magazine. https://www.the-scientist.com/fda-announces-plan-to-phase-out-animal-testing-will-that-work-73173
Thompson-Iritani, S. A., & Newsome, J. T. (2025). Animal Research at a Crossroads: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Emerging Threats. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.30802/aalas-jaalas-25-020
Akhtar, A. (2015). The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 24(04), 407–419. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180115000079