Animal Testing Must be Stopped

Each year, millions of animals are used to test how safe and effective products, such as cosmetics, cleaning products, and every day use products are. They are force-fed harmful chemicals, scalded, blinded, and maimed. Animal testing should be banned because it is cruel, unnecessary, inaccurate, and expensive. Approximately 17 million animals are used for testing each year in the United States. Substances are injected into the animal, chemicals are force-fed, irritants are rubbed into the eyes and many of the animals lose their lives once the torturing is over. They are tortured to the point of death. At this very moment millions of animals are being tortured for our convenience in laboratories. In the laboratories theyre experimented on and live in constant pain and fear, a cycle that must be stopped. Animals in laboratories live stressful lives of being deprived daily and imprisoned due to animal testing. The only changes in their lives may come from new research and new tests being introduced into their bodies. They are experimented on every second of their life. Every year in the U.S alone over 30 million animals are used in medical, drug, and cosmetic experiments. This includes dogs, ferrets, rabbits, sheep, monkeys, pigs, cats, chimpanzees, and more. The majority of animals experimented upon are mice and rats. Animals are subjected to all types of experimenting. Each experiment has no remorse shown, procedures include things such as infecting animals with diseases, poisoning for toxicity testing, burning their skin, implanting electrodes into the brain, maiming, blinding, and other painful procedures (DAAEG). These procedures are harming and invasive, leading to many animals dying from the stress and abnormality of the procedures. Many animals go into shock from not being able to handle the process. Many times when they are introduced to these experiments they suffer and are even isolated from others to be picked upon more. This is a barbarian act in modern-day society, where much less invasive procedures exist. Some animals go days without seeing the light of the sun and are withheld of food and water due to unending testing. They spend their lives being tortured and living in cages, drugged out and unable to choose otherwise. When it comes to more toxic testing, animals are tested on the daily, all seven days of the week, sometimes they are tested for up to two years with no recovery periods in between. Many animals die before the end of the study, if they survive some are left with no limbs, sights, and many other basic functions that they might as well should have died. The pain and misery animals are put through is unjustified, especially since the experiments they are subject to are proven to be unnecessary and pointless. Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do, they even cry and scream the way we do when we are in pain and agony. All of this endless torturing because of our selfish nature. We as humans can put a stop to animal testing for good especially if it deemed unnecessary. According to the FDA, they do not require animal testing before approving a product. The FD&C Act does not specifically require the use of animals in testing cosmetics for safety, nor does the act subject cosmetics to FDA premarket approval (FD&C Act). It is cruel to continue animal testing especially if it is not required. There are multiple cruelty free brands that have opted this alternative to not testing on animals. They are some of the most successful brands today, with adversely no harsh effects on humans. Buying the brands that support alternatives rather than animal testing could give us a leap into a future with cruelty free products. Another reason animal testing should be banned is because it is a waste of money. There is no point in waste us wasting our money on something you know has a slim chance of working in the end. Unfortunately, that it what happens when we test on animals. According to a new report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, taxpayers have spent over $150 million funding 95 experiments related to the effects of recreational drug use on animals, purportedly to gain insights into how such drugs affect human behavior and health (Washington Times). It is a massive waste of money that can be spent on many other things. They could even use that money to find ways to develop more non-animal testing methods which usually are more reliable and cost less money. Most of the tests on animals often fail at mimicking human diseases and most make a poor way of predicting what will really happen to humans and how the human body will respond. Most alternatives to animal testing have been proven more successful and reliable than experimenting on harmless animals. Using human tissues in toxicity testing is more accurate than animal models that are normally used. Non-animal tests have also been proven faster and more environmentally friendly. Do not let animal testing be a waste of time, money, and the lives of millions of animals annually, especially if there are alternatives. These alternatives to animal testing include sophisticated tests using human cells and tissues (also known as in vitro methods), advanced computer-modeling techniques (often referred to as in silico models), and studies with human volunteers. These and other non-animal methods are not hindered by species differences that make applying animal test results to humans difficult or impossible, and they usually take less time and money to complete. (peta.org) This new experimentation also has a better success rate than animal testing ever has. The technology is so advanced that it can replicate how it would be in actual human anatomy. These alternatives, give us a bang for our buck and guaranteed results. There is nothing better than actual replicas of what you will be using a product on. Animals are not humans. Animals and humans differ in many ways, especially in regard to anatomy, physiology and metabolism. Which is why animal testing is such a great controversy. Animal testing cannot predict how a human will react to the same drug an animal was given. We simply just do not know if it will work or not, regardless of how much studies are done. A study conducted by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer came to the conclusion that one would be better off tossing a coin than relying on animal experiments to answer the question of carcinogenic substances. Only 5 - 25% of the substances harmful to humans also have adverse effects on the experimental animals. Tossing a coin delivers better results (D.A.A.E.G). There is an endless amount of medicine that has worked solely off of animal experiments but caused severe or even lethal effects in humans. There have been many drugs tested on animals that simply did not work on humans. Thousands of the millions of animals that are tested on die every year for products that have no outcome in the end. It is selfish to not think of how many animal lives are lost in the studies that have been proved harmful to humans once we have used them. A big contribution to this is because most human diseases do not occur in animals by nature, meaning that any human like disease and symptom is stimulated into animals. For example, in order to induce Parkinsonr's disease, monkeys, rats, or mice are injected with a neurotoxin that destroy brain cells. Cancer is induced in by mice means of genetic engineering or injecting cancer cells. Cerebral strokes are caused in mice by inserting a thread into a cerebral artery. Diabetes in rats is caused by injecting a toxin that destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Heart attacks are stimulated in dogs by constricting a coronary artery with a noose (D.A.A.E.G). These procedures are extensive, invasive, and expensive. There is a rare chance that these experiments could work, making it a waste of money. There is no point in continually wasting tax payer dollars on unnatural animal testing when we have alternatives that actually replicate human anatomy. More could also be found if we spent less money on animal testing and more money on creating alternatives to ineffective animal testing. In a 2004 study from the U.S Food and Drug Administration found that 92 percent of drugs entering clinical trials following animal testing fail to be approved. Of those that were approved, half are withdrawn or relabeled due to severe or lethal adverse effects not detected during animal tests. (livescience.com) These studies show and give us the numbers of why animal testing has not been helpful. Much of the medicine that has been tested on animals has cured diseases in animals but have gone on to have deadly effects on humans. There simply are too many variables in difference of gene expression and immune functioning between animals and humans. There is extensive research that has been done that proves to us time after time that shows how wasteful animal testing is, according to Health and Human Services Secretary, Mike Leavitt, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies. (https://aavs.org) Even in animals that share a large portion of genetic similarities there is failure. In 2011, the National Institute of Health concluded that there was no need for chimpanzees in biomedical research, going on to say that they have rendered chimpanzees largely nonessential as research subjects (https://www.mcclatchydc.com). If humans and chimpanzees share 96 percent of their genes and is not useful for human research, no other specie will further aid our experiments. It is illogical to think that any other animal would be effective in research if a humanr's closest relative is deemed unnecessary. Animal testing is proven time after time to be unhelpful. There is no point in continuing the torture of millions of animals after endless research has shown the unreliability of animal testing. In modern day society, many alternatives exist. A newly developed technology created by professor James Hickman, at the University of Central Florida, mimics standard human muscular function which allows researchers to monitor muscular function and its response to different treatments without using human or animal subjects. Bioengineering PhD student Alan Faulkner-Jones began pioneering the use of 3-D printing to replace medical animal testing (onegreenplanet.org) Forward-thinking scientists have developed humane, modern, and effective non-animal research methods, including human-based microdosing, in vitro technology, human-patient simulators, and sophisticated computer modeling, that are cheaper, faster, and more accurate than animal tests. (peta.org) In conclusion, animal testing should be eliminated because it violates the rights of because millions of animals. It causes unnecessary pain and suffering to experiment on animals of our own greed. We as humans cannot justify making our lives better at the extent of hurting animals through torture and execution of thousands of animals each year because of experimentation. Animals should also be treated with the same dignity we demand for ourselves. Through the advance of technology there have been multiple alternatives to end animal testing that are cheaper and more effective than torturing innocent animals. Put an end to animal testing today.

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