Argumentative Essay: Should Animals Be Banned?

Has it ever crossed your mind what it would be like to be a laboratory animal? Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned, and abused in U.S labs every year. You've most likely heard of animal testing but perhaps aren't completely sure what it is. Animal testing is the experimentation carried out on animals used to "assess the safety and effectiveness of everything from medication to cosmetics, as well as understanding how the human body works." However, there is more that goes on behind the scenes throughout these experimentations. Overall, it is more often than not cruel, produces inaccurate results, is immoral, and should be banned; allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, there is a myriad of things that go unnoticed by consumers of animal tested products. They are mostly incognizant of the scarring, awful experiences that test animals go through, trapped in the merciless, gloved hands of a scientist. The

animals most used for animal experimentation include mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds. Millions are killed ruthlessly in these labs. "Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized." The text speaks for itself.

Moreover, animal experimentation is not only cruel, but is seemingly useless. Animals most similar to the human, body and DNA-wise, are often chosen for experiments to assess the safety of a product. A majority of the time, species of monkeys are used because they are built the most similar to us. However, as much as testing prototypical human products on animals seems to be useful and clever, it really isn't. They are in reality unreliable and unbeneficial to us. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) states that 92% "of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don't work or are dangerous." Actually, we aren't promised accurate results showing that a product is human-safe unless it is tested on a human source. So not only is it cruel, it's wasteful of product and animals, and it's also unnecessary and mostly provides unreliable information.

Moving on to the next topic, morality and mercy.

Many of the things that happen to animals behind the glass doors of a laboratory are awful and trauma causing. No creature, large or small, hairy or scaly, would ever want to go through the experiments listed previously. Some may say it is up to one's morals to decide if animal testing is okay to perform or not, but anyone in the right mind, if they were aware of the maltreatment, would 99% disagree that animal testing is justifiable. The other one percent acknowledge the abuse but would rather reconcile with the opinion that, 'If we don't test on these animals, who would we test on? Humans? But we have feelings.' Now, here comes the part that is tricky to debate about; whether animals have souls, or are soulless. That's up to one's own beliefs, but is inevitable that all animals capable of functioning nervous systems can feel every pinch of pain inflicted at the hands of a scientist. All in all, supporting animal experimentation or thriving to put an end to it, is up to your code of

ethics.

In summation, using animals to test if our cosmetics, medications, and other products are safe for human use, is absolutely malicious. Scientists cut, restrain, prod, poison, slice, burn, confine, slit, crush, and drill these animals until they are debilitated or dead. It is so extremely vile and immoral. It also doesn't aid us in obtaining valid data and dependable confirmations. Such a thing so useless and unprincipled is still going on today, but society is so blinded and oblivious that these animals continue to suffer at our costs. Take a stand today and so 'No!' to animal experimentation.