Animal Testing has been Around

Animal testing has been around since the year BC. We don't take in account where the items we purchase come from and the process it went through. Animal testing has cured and found new treatments to cure diseases such as tuberculosis, meningitis, diphtheria, ect. However, many treatments tested on animals do not work for humans, 9 - 10 experimental drugs fail in clinical studies (Michael O. Leavitt), The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse (Dr. Richard Klausner), ect. Even though a large amount of people propose that testing aids humans quality of life, it harms and damages animals life in the process.

From makeup to new treatments, many of these inventions have been created with a cost. According to UCLA, scientists were able to introduce a deep brain stimulation, a production used to treat numerous of disabling neurological symptoms. With this, scientist were able to find new leads for parkinson's diseases. Also, the development of artificial hearts was possible because of animal testing. Valves were needed for the passage of blood which caused Albert Starr to create a caged ball valve that was implanted in dogs.

This resulted in the improvements of the caged ball valves due to the fact that many dogs only survived ten days and with the upgrade, many survived up to 13 months. These long survival times enabled examination of how effective the valves are in the living heart, even one year after the implantation. Additionally, with the aid of mice, UCLA was able to discover a missing gene in infants which causes childhood blindness. With those findings, it helped forward a cure and a treatment for the disease. Lastly, UCLA used mice to find a more effective way for the usage of radiation for cancer patients. With there finding, many cancer patients are now open to radiation treatments. Therefore, these four discoveries illustrate of what animal testing has done for the quality of human life.

There are numerous amounts of reasons why people decide and choose to test an animals. For instance, chimpanzee and mice dna are extremely similar to human dna which essentially means there hearts, kidneys, lungs, ect function like humans. Also, since animals and humans are so biologically similar, they have a great risk to many of the same conditions and illnesses us humans get including heart disease, diabetes, ect.

In addition, mice and rats are mostly used in most findings because of how short there life cycle is. Laboratory mice and rats tend to only live up to two or three years at most which helps scientist study the effects of treatments or new discoveries. Lastly, cosmetic products is apart to this type of testing due to having many productions tested to see how safe they are for humans. The US Food and Drug Administration needs to approve products to "assure the safety of a product or ingredient." and China requires that all cosmetics need to be tested on animals so they can be sold and distributed in their countries, otherwise they will not be. Lastly, religion plays a part towards animal testing. The Bible states in Genesis 1:26: "And God said... let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

The BBC states the teaching of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim explains that animal testing is fine as long as there is no unnecessary pain triggered and there is a real possibility of benefits towards humans. In other words, we can justify these findings have made many improvements in our lives and animals but at a cost towards animals.

Many might argue testing on animals assists on new findings and improves life quality for humans but most don't know the effect it has towards the animals. For instance, in many cases, experiments tend to not work out as planned which results in wasting the lives of animals. Also, 94% of drugs that pass animal tests doesn't mean it will work for humans, most of them fail in human clinical trials which means not everything animals are tested on are safe.

According to neurologist Aysha Akhtar, more than one hundred stroke drugs that were effective towards animals have failed in humans, and over eight five HIV vaccines failed in humans after working well for animals. Also, testing on animals doesn't just improve human life but animal life. If scientists were to have never tested on animals to help find vaccines and cures then countless animals would have died from feline leukemia, rabies, canine parvovirus, and infectious hepatitis virus, just naming a few. Lastly, even though animals help scientist move forward, there have been new findings demonstrating human cells are better subjects to test on instead of animals.

Overall, we as people need to realize animals don't volunteer to be treated like slaves. Without animal testing, human life would be completely different. We would not have vaccines, new inventions, cures, new findings, ect. We don't consider the process and pain it took for us to receive many creations that we take for granted such as treatments, makeup, medication, ect. We need to face reality and see what animals go through in scientific facilities and other countries so we can live our best lives while they live theres with pain and misery.

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