The Harsh Truth of Animal Testing Throughout history, beginning as early as 500 BC, animals have been used to test products that will later be utilized by humans (“Animal Testing” 4), what isn’t publicly discussed is the way it will leave the animals after the process is done. Many innocent rabbits, monkeys, mice, and even popular pets such as dogs are harmed during the testing application of cosmetics, medicine, perfumes, and many other consumer products (Donaldson 2). Nevertheless, there are many people whom support the scandal because "it is a legal requirement to carry out animal testing to ensure they are safe and effective” for human benefit (Drayson). The overall question here is should it even be an authorized form of experimentation in the United States, or anywhere else? The fact of the matter is that there are alternatives to remove animals out of the equation for good (“Alternatives” 1). They are cheaper, and less invasive than the maltreatment of the 26 million innocent animals that are subjected to the heartlessness of testing each year (“Animal Testing” 4). All in all, due to the harsh effects of animal testing, it should be treated as animal cruelty in today’s society. 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... ... middle of paper ... ... to one single neuron, eliminating cats and other animals from brain altering tests (“Alternatives” 2-4). Hurting an animal is better than hurting a fellow human being right? Well imagine a child being ripped away from his mother in today’s society, for no reason. Would that be considered okay, or kidnapping? Imagine humans being forced to breed, just so their children can be tortured for makeup or a new facial wash. Would that be considered okay, or morally incorrect? People do not see animals as fellow living things, because they do not have the power to say no like a person can. They can’t stand up for themselves, leaving the people of the world to do it for them. Seeing that there are other ways to test out consumer products, why harm defenseless, breathing, loving, beings? With all things considered, animal testing “has no place in science today” (Goodall, 1).
The roots of animal experimentation began in the early 1600s when the world expressed in interests on the functions of animals and their uses in human life. However, it wasn’t until the incident regarding the drug thalidomide in 1960 did the government make it a requirement for drugs be tested on animals. During the incident, millions of women took the medication believing that it would be a source of relieve from morning sickness, not knowing however that it would cause irrevocable effects on their unborn children (Watson 4). Although the ruling seemed to provide a sigh of relief to some, the very idea of placing animals in strange uncomfortable environments and experiencing pain and euthanasia angered many. According to the American Anti-Vivisection Society, commonly known as AAVS, It is wrong to treat animals as objects for the purpose of scientific research, and to cause them pain and suffering (“Animal Research Is Unethical and Scientifically Unnecessary”). Although the arguments against animal experimentation seem credible, animal testing on medicines and products are necessary in order to insure the safety of human beings.
Approximately two to four million animals have been used in safety tests. Safety tests are conducted with a wide range of chemicals and products, including drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, household cleaners, and packing materials. This raises issues such as the ethics and humaneness of deliberately poisoning animals, thus harming them, for the sake of marketing a new cosmetic or household product.
Over 100 Million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in testing Labs every year. Animals are used to test the safety of products, advance scientific research, and develop models to study disease and to develop new medical treatments all for the sake of mankind. Animals should not be used for scientific research because animal testing is inhumane, other testing methods now exist, and animals are very different from human beings.
Animals are tested on for many cosmetic and medical products, but the treatment of the animals and the quality of the test results are often less satisfactory than the consumer realizes. Every person has most likely purchased either a pharmaceutical or cosmetic product in his or her lives, but the careless techniques for making these products may astound individuals that rely on drugs for everyday use. According to the Food and Drug Administration, “every year about fifteen -hundred” drugs are created, but “twelve-hundred” are deemed unusable for people. Regardless of such a high number or drug rejections, about “one-million Americans are hospitalized from flaws in drugs” (“Animal Experimentation,” 2009). Most of these drugs were tested on animals before being approved for human use, which proves that animal testing is not a successful method of experimentation. Some factors should be considered when deciding what testing method is most helpful to society; whether an animal has similar genetics to humans, if testing animals are treated humanely, and the costs of conducting the tests. Scientists and animal support groups have quarreled for centuries over the morals of using testing animals and human safety when using animals for toxic experimentations. Individuals for animal testing usually claim that there are no alternatives or it is the safest out of all the methods, but he or she may not be aware of modern technologies that are capable of making a new and improved data for certain pharmaceutical products.
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.
Many product tests performed on animals can be described as unusually cruel. Animals are forced through tests as skin sensitization, skin irritation/corrosion, eye irritation/corrosion, acute oral toxicity, reproductive/developmental screens, and developmental toxicity; usually without being given any sort of painkiller.4 With so many new, more advanced, and accurate ways to test products, why are we still resorting to the cruel, ancient methods? With many Americans applying “out of sight, out of mind” towards animal testing, now is the time to bring it t...
Lloyd, Emma. "Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research." Animal Experimentation (2008): n. pag. Web. 27 Feb 2011.
“The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’’ This quote by Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher and animal rights activist refers to the unjust treatments of animals and their helplessness towards the cruelty they suffer from humans. Animal testing should be banned because it is not proven that the product is safe even after being tested by animals, the living conditions lab animals are required to be in are not healthy for any animal, and newer technology can be used as a substitute for animal testing. As the dominating species, we have the upper hand in situations like this but if the roles were reversed and we were lab animals, we wouldn’t want people to be using us as their testers for products that could potentially kill us. Several makeup tests that are usually tested on mice, rats, and guinea pigs consist of tests for the irritation of the skin and eyes where chemicals are put on shaved skin or dropped into an animal’s eyes without any relief for the pain being caused to them. Also, a generally denounced lethal dose test is carried out on the lab animals where they are forced to ingest large amounts of a product’s chemical for scientists to conclude on what is the exact dose that can cause death for the people who buy the product.
For decades, using animals for laboratory testing has been a controversial issue. Typically, animal testing is used to test cosmetics and medicines that may be used on humans. Scientists tend to use animals for testing when there’s a chance that the chemicals used in the substances could cause harm to the person using them. It is estimated that more than 115 million animals world-wide are used in lab experiments every year. Since only a small proportion of countries collect and publish data concerning animal use for research, the exact number is unknown. The question is whether the use of experimenting with animals is morally right or wrong. Most people would agree that of course it is wrong. If these heinous acts were committed outside labs,
If you had the choice to live or die, which would you choose? If you had the alternative to live in a cage or in a house which would you select? If you had the option to have experiments that caused you pain preformed on you would you? The truth is that most of us would rather live, reside in a house and would not be a part of an experiment that caused us pain. However, most people accept the elements of the above conditions for animals. Animals should not be a part of the pain and horrific conditions that humans put them through. We shouldn’t just let these innocent animals suffer and die to save human lives, when we could find other ways to treat diseases.
The ethics behind using animals for experiments and tests has been questioned and debated for years. Many people believe that animal experimentations can be crucial towards medical breakthroughs such as the cure for cancer, HIV/AIDS or asthma. Meanwhile others argue that animals that are used to test cosmetics such as make-up and perfumes are inhuman because is not going to help improve the human race. Animals suffer through multiple types of torture such as being forced to ingest poisonous chemicals, blinded, burned, stapled, and infected with disease viruses. Even though animal experimentation may be considered inhumane to many, animal experimentation is crucial to advancements in medical research and can lead to a better quality of life; on the other hand, animal experimentation should not be used to develop cosmetics because such experimentation is cruel and unnecessary.
The way I look at animal testing is a form hateful cruelty. None of these people care about if it hurts or kills the animals. The cruelty has been going on long enough and I think it is time to stop. What people do not know is that animal’s react a different way to drugs as humans do, so scientist cannot apply the results to humans. Many animals go through screaming, unbearable, horrific; you cannot even imagine pain when they go through test for products that you use every day such as: Cosmetics, Household Products, Medical Products, even Iams dog products. Some well-known animals that are use for testing are: cats, dogs, mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, sheep, llamas, cattle, owls, deer, monkeys and other primates. These are not, by any means, all of the animals that they use. These are just the most common ("Animal Rights: Animal Testing"). Animals cannot tell you that something hurts, but they can scream to let the scientist know, but none of them care that it hurts them so bad. Some scientist do not see that countless animals suffer and die, or that it is just plain wrong. These animals suffer, feel pain, hurt and want to live as we do. These companies have burned the skin off some animals, mutilated some bunnies’ ears, poisoned the mice, punching puppies in the face, drip a substance in bunnies eyes, and the suffering and dying of these animals has gone on too long.
Animal testing is the use of non-human animals for scientific experimentation. There are estimates that 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals worldwide from zebra fish to on-human primates are used annually. Much larger numbers of invertebrates are used even flies and worms are used has model organisms are very important, experiments on invertebrates are largely unregulated and not included in statistics. Animals are euthanized after being used in a experiment. Some of these animals are purpose-bred and others are caught in the wild or they are supplied by dealers who obtain them from auctions and pounds. The testing on the animals are conducted inside universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, farms, defense establishments and commercial facilities that provide animal-testing services to industry. Some of the tests that researchers do on the animals are biomedical research transplantation, drug testing and toxicology test, cosmetics and other animals are used for directional research, breeding and defense research. Organizations like PETA and BUVA thinks it it not a necessity for this testings. They think is is cruel, poor scientific practice, poorly regulated and that animals used for experimentations have an intrinsic right not be be used for experimentation. Many Americans don’t agree with testing on animals. Testing animals is wrong and they are just poor helpless animals and they die every day. They are testing animals with products such has soap, household cleaners, drugs, cosmetics, pesticides and other chemicals. Drug tests that are done on animals that pass the test end up harming or killing humans. Lists of animals that get tested daily are cats, dogs, monkeys, mice, and rabbits. The researchers test these ...
Each year, thousands of animals are brutally tortured in laboratories, in the name of cosmetic research. A movement to ban animal testing for cosmetic purposes has been gaining popularity, with many companies hopping on the bandwagon against this research. New alternatives have been developed to eliminate the necessity to test on animals. This is only a small beginning of what is necessary to end these immoral acts. Animal testing in cosmetics is useless and cruel, and can be accomplished by other methods of research to end the suffering of animals.
Animals should have rights just like humans and should not have to go to through torture. Killing animals is wrong and should be stopped because animals have done nothing wrong. Imagine not having a choice and being used for testing without having a say; for everyone this seems like a horrible nightmare but for animals this nightmare is reality. Animals should not be used for testing. They do not have a voice so they have no way of saying no and testing on animals is wrong in every way possible. It is unfair to the animals because they do not have a choice. Although animal testing is wrong, it is a good way to make sure the product research is safe before retailing it and letting people use it. Animal testing should not be used because animals