People have different feelings for animals some look upon animals as companions while others view animals as a means for advancing medical techniques or furthering experimental research. However individuals perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies all across the country and all around the world. What many people tend to forget are the great numbers of animal subjects that have suffered serious harm during the process of experimentation, the pain, the suffering, and the deaths of animals. In my opinion animal testing is cruelty more than science therefore I strongly believe it should be banned.
First and forefar most, ever thought about if the results of if animal tested products are reliable. Are results on animals reliable, do they perform the same way on humans? Afterall humans and animals are two totally different species. Thinking of it this way it doesn’t really make sense to be testing on animals for human products. The pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any possible benefits to humans.
The Federal Drug Administration ( FDA) reports that “92 percent of drugs approved for testing in humans fail to receive approval for human use. This failure rate has increased from 86 percent in 1985, in spite of all the ‘advances and refinements’ intended to make animal tests more accurate.” If we look at these data in another way, only about 8% of drugs that pass tests on nonhuman animals also supposedly work on humans. I know that if someone told me I only had an 8% chance of leaving my home and getting to town I’d decide not to venture out. In general making human’s lives better should not be justification for torturing and exploiting animals.
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Next, the pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any possible benefits to humans. According to the Humane Society, registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12,000 animals. Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do in fact, their reactions to pain are virtually identical (both humans and animals scream, for example). When animals are used for laboratory research, they face painful and frequently deadly experiments. Two of the most commonly used toxicity tests are the Draize test and the LD50 test, both of which are infamous for the intense pain and suffering they inflict upon experimental animals.
In the Draize test the substance or product being tested is placed in the eyes of an animal (generally a rabbit is used for this test) then the animal is monitored for damage to the cornea and other tissues in and near the eye. This test is intensely painful for the animal, and blindness, scarring, and death are generally the end results. The Draize test has been criticized for being unreliable and a needless waste of animal life. The LD50 test is used to test the dosage of a substance that is necessary to cause death in fifty percent of the animal subjects within a certain amount of time. To perform this test, the researchers hook the animals up to tubes that pump huge amounts of the test product into their stomachs until they die. This test is extremely painful to the animals because death can take days or even weeks.
Importantly, animals rights are violated when they are used in research. Animals and people are alike in many ways they both feel, think, behave, and experience pain. Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect as humans. Yet animals rights are violated when they are used in research because they are not given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often painful or cause permanent damage or death, and they are never given the option of not participating in the experiment. Animals do not willingly sacrifice themselves for the advancement of human welfare and new technology. Their decisions are made for them because they cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices. When humans decide the fate of animals in research environments, the animals rights are taken away without any thought of their well-being or the quality of their lives. Therefore, animal experimentation should be stopped because it violates the rights of animals.
Finally, the testing of products on animals is completely unnecessary because alternatives are available. Many cosmetic companies have better ways to test their products without the use of animal subjects. The Body Shop, a well-known cosmetics and bath-product company based in London, the development of products use natural ingredients, like bananas and Basil nut oil, as well as others with a long history of “safe human usage” is advocated instead of testing on animals.
Computers have also been used to simulate and estimate the potential damage that a product or chemical can cause, and human tissues and cells have been used to examine the effects of harmful substances. In another method, “in- vitro testing”, cellular tests are done inside a test tube. All of these tests have been proven to be useful and reliable alternatives to testing products on live animals. Now, is it really necessary to test on animals after learning about all these viable alternatives.
In conclusion, animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available. Did you know U.S. law allows animals to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No experiment, no matter how painful or minor, is prohibited and painkillers are not required. Humans cannot justify making life better for themselves by randomly torturing and executing thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or to test products. Animals should be treated with respect and dignity, and this right to decent treatment is not upheld when animals are exploited for selfish human gain. After all, humans are animals too.
References
- Humane Society International – Biomedical Animal Research Tragedies
- National Center for Biotechnology Information – Animal Experimentation: The Legacy of Claude Bernard
- New England Anti-Vivisection Society – Animal Testing in Research
- National Geographic – Why Mice in Medical Studies Don’t Always Match Up
