Is it ethical to use animals in research? From the point of view of the animals, it is quite simply wrong. From our stand point, it seems ridiculous to equate a rat with a human being. If clearly and honestly believe that using animals in research will, in the end, reduce massive human suffering, it would be difficult to argue that doing so is unethical. How do we find a way out of this dilimma? One thing we can do is change our mind-set. We can begin by questioning the assumption that animals are essential to medical research, scientists have concluded that chimpanzees are not useful for AIDS research because even though their genetic make up differs from ours by about 1 percent, their immune systems deal much differently. Many scientists test drugs and vaccines on animals simply because they are required to by law rather than out of scientific merit. This is a shame, because our medical technology is beginning to provide alternatives. We can perform many tests on cell and tissue cultures without resource to systematic testing on animals. Computer simulations can also cut down on the number of animal tests we need to run. We aren’t exploring these alternatives vigorously enough.