Animal Testing Every year over 100 million animals, such as guinea pigs, mice, cats, dogs, pigs, frogs and many others are tested on. These animals are tested for cosmetics, medical research, biology lessons, food, chemicals, drugs and even just curiosity-driven experiments. Animal testing is inhumane and should only be used for medical purposes. For starters, animal testing is inhumane and cruel. According to Human Society animals breath in toxic fumes. Rats are put into a tube with fumes for perfumes, this lead to more that half of the rats dying within 14 days of the testing or some may have seizures,bleeding, or become paralyzed while still being in the intoxicated tube. Guinea pigs and mice are tested for skin sensation, most resulting in redness, irritation, ulcers, scaling and in some cases permanent skin damage. Rabbits are shaved, then tested with patches for face mask products and others, after being exposed half of them result in dying within 14 days. Rabbits are tested on for eye irritation. To test them for eye irritation they use the draize test. Draize testing is where shampoos, body wash and other cosmetic products are dropped into their eyes or put into their eyes with a syringe. If not successful they animals result in blindness, Last, …show more content…
According to change.org the US alone spends $16 billion dollars for animal testing and out of that $16 billion $12-$14.5 goes towards cosmetic animal testing every year. Not only is the US spending billions, but it’s coming out of taxpayers' pockets. Much of animal testing is caused by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH distributes 40% of their annual research budget into animal testing. There are many alternatives for testing, which are cheaper and not harmful. For example, computer models, stem cell and genetic methods, and even microdosing. Cosmetic testing is overpriced and there are many alternatives that are cheaper and less
Although animal research is a shareholder in the development of medicine and the advance of cosmetic and household products, it is still not legitimate to abuse those creatures to satisfy human needs and wants. Alternatives have been initiated to relinquish the use of non-human beings since it is against animal rights. Animal testing should be prohibited and new methods should be introduced to non-medical institutions like the cosmetic industries and the household production enterprises. Laboratories should take ease of technology to supersede animals by upgraded alternatives that can help in the development of new treatments that may be more efficient. Personally, I think animal testing is a cruel nature that cannot be justified. Why sacrifice those defenseless lives if superior methods are available?
They are forcibly given toxic substances and pain relief is never an option. Killing the animals at the end of the testing is common practice, since the animals are no longer useful. In one example, rabbits acted as test subjects to test the eye irritation of certain shampoos. The bunnies were restrained, their eyelids forced open with clips for days and the shampoos were applied. Some of the test subjects experienced redness, ulcers, and bleeding and even blindness.
Animal testing has long played a part in the science of testing, and it still plays a very important role in the medical world. Testing on animals in order to create a cure for AIDS is one thing, but testing on animals for human vanity is another. Animal testing is used to test the safety of a product. It has kept some very unsafe substances out of the cosmetic world. However, in this day in age, animal testing is not the only way to test the safety of a product. Animal testing in cosmetics has decreased over the years. However, it is still used by many companies in America. Animal testing is not only cruel, but it is also unnecessary in today’s advanced scientific world.
They determine the toxic levels for mice, dogs, rabbits, cats and chimpanzees, but not for young or old men and women. Some animals die in the test as a result of the volume of material, not the toxicity of the material. Most important, is the number of animals that suffer unnecessarily: why pour drain cleaner down the throats of animals, when humans would never do such a thing? Eye irritancy tests are outdated. Companies use the Draize Test to determine the irritancy of household products and cosmetics, including laundry soap, toilet cleaner, perfumes and shampoos.
There are many ways the animals suffer some of the ways are being forced feed, also being food and water deprived, and being inflicted of burn. Many cosmetic companies use The Draize eye test, which is used to evaluate irritation caused by shampoos and other products. This test uses rabbits, the rabbits are being incapacitated in stocks with their eyelids held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested. The rabbits are tortured for days even there is an
The testing of animals is rising from pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies because the companies are spending billions of dollars on animals testing in order to make products safer to humans. Test animals are also treated poorly and, because of how they are treated, the animals begin to act differently. The substances cosmetics companies inject into animals are very harmful and torturous to animals, so most animals end up dying or being severely handicapped from then on. Most of the findings and conclusions from animal experimentation do not end up working the same way with humans. Enormous amounts of money are spent on animal testing each year when there are better ways to put the investments for better benefit for our country. Advancements in technology should be used to speed up and improve the process of developing cures for humans instead of continuing to torture innocent creatures. Although animal testing is still being used, the European Union has banned it completely. There are many alternative ways that are in the process of being made but ultimately we need an alternative method that bans animal testing completely.
...ts on animals. China is also in the process of decreasing the amount of animal tested products in circulation as well (“Cosmetics and House-Hold Products Animal Testing”). Even though there are alternatives to using animals in this testing, companies in the United States still continue to torture animals for the sake of beauty. There are plenty more ways to experiment with products that do not involve animals in any way, and these tests also produce more reliable information. According to Earth Protect, Tests like this are often cheaper and produce faster results than animal research ever has. For example, there is a model of human cornea tissues that can be subject to eye irritation experiments instead of a rabbit, and there are models of skin cells that can be used for skin irritation tests instead of guinea pigs (“Cosmetic Animal Testing Facts and Alternatives”).
One of the largest controversies involving the testing on animals is the harm that is inflicted on them. Proof lies in the many leaked photographs showing the horrific pain that has been forced onto beings that cannot speak for themselves. A test called Lethal Dose 50%, or LD50, is a test to assess cosmetics such as lipstick, nail polish, skin care products, and others. This can leave the rabbits, dogs, mice, or other unfortunate animals left crippled with severe untreated chemical burns. During the assessment of the product the animals are force...
There is alternatives without testing or torturing the animals. These non-animal methods usually take less time to complete, cost a fraction of what the animal experiments would be and they are not plagued with species differences that make extrapolation difficult of impossible. Effective, affordable, and humane research methods include studies of human populations, volunteers, and patients as well as sophisticated in vitro, genomic, and computer-modeling techniques. Companies that are exploring modern alternatives. Some companies are only using human tissues and sophisticated computer technology in the process of drug development and testing. Some companies say that discovery process is much more efficient with human tissues instead of animal tissue.
One of the many painful tests administered to animals in laboratories is the Draize Test. This experiment, introduced forty-five years ago by FDA toxicologist John H. Draize, "is used to measure the harmfulness of chemicals found in household products and cosmetics by observing the damage they cause to the eyes and skin of animals" (Products, 1, 97). The brutal results of these series of tests (usually on rabbits) leave animals with mutilated, blind, or ulcerated eyes. At the end of these immoral tests, the animals are all killed to study their internal anatomy. Products, 97.
Animal testing is an act of barbarism, the fact that animals are being bred to be a victim of crude experiments and then euthanized is cruel. An Eye Irritancy Test is a test in which albino rabbits have a substance entered into their eyes that are held open with clips for seven to eighteen days. The rabbits are confined in stocks with only their heads protruding while experimenters record the damage of the eye tissue which can vary to being swollen eyelids, inflamed irises, ulceration, bleeding, massive deterioration, and blindness. Many rabbits break their necks as they struggle to escape from the pain. Another savage test is an Acute Toxicity Test, also known as lethal doses, or poisoning tests. This test determines the amount of a substance that will kill a percentage of a group of test animals. Substances are forced into the animal’s body by tubes to the stomach, cuts to the throat, introduced to the eyes, mixed into food or inhaled through a gas mask. Reactions to this test can include convulsions, heavy breathing, diarrhea, constipation, emaciation, contortion, skin eruptions, and bleeding. The testing period continues until at least half of the animals die, approximately two to four weeks. Keep in mind, anesthesia is absent during these procedures.
Imagine your sweet cat locked in a cage inside a laboratory with other various animals. Millions of animals every year are locked up in labs for testing. Animals are used to test medications, cosmetics, biology lessons, and for medical training. Thousands of mice, rats, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are used for testing. Most of these animals will die in cruel testing experiments. Animal testing is tortures to the animals, an unreliable option for medication, and there are better safer options for testing.
Should animal testing be banned? Now, animal testing is still a controversial subject, and the scientists are facing an increasing problem, with more and more people appealing to stop animal testing. The original purpose of animal testing was to invent drugs for human diseases. For example, Scutti (2013) states that 98 of Nobel Prizes awarded for Physiology or Medicine, 75 were directly dependent on research from animals. The four non-animal experiment prize winners also relied on the data, which were obtained from other animal research groups.
A second practice involves taking a chemical that is used to produce a specific kind of make-up and rubbing it into the skin of an animal after its fur has been shaved. Skin irritation tests cause the chemical to seep into the body of the animal, not just the skin. This chemical process is also done on the eyes. The scientists will drip a certain amount of a chemical into the eyes of an animal causing excruciating pain. The animals are not given pain relief medication of any kind after the procedure to see how it affects them and if the effects are
It still comes as a surprise to me that with all the technology in today’s society, we are still relying on animals for cosmetic research. Some people think that it is acceptable and even justified to test on mere animals rather than risk hurting people. So, for these kinds of people, animal testing makes perfect sense. However, in my opinion, animals are living creatures and have the right to live out their lives as nature intended rather than simply surviving in cages while being poked and prodded with whatever scientists fancy. I think it is depressing and sort of grotesque that I am using products that have been tested on animals that are even commonly bred as our pets. So, I began my research to find out what companies still test on animals, why they do so, and what other alternatives they could use in place of animal testing.