Informative Essay: The Role Of Animal Testing In Our Society

Animal testing has a long and ugly history in our society, beginning with the early Greeks, Arabs, and Romans, and continuing into this century. It has been a controversial topic since its development, but objections have been steadily rising since the mid to late nineteenth century. As more companies emerged during the industrial revolution, more animals were used to test products, and more complaints were voiced in animal rights groups, and rightly so. Animal testing endangers the lives and well-being of numerous animals, and is not as advantageous as it seems. First of all, up to 95% of animals are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act, which exempts rats, mice, fish and birds. Additionally, animal tests do not always accurately portray the effects that the product would have on humans. Many chemicals are detrimental to

They argue that animals have led to many amazing medical discoveries, and that the differing environments in which animals are tested (leading to possible discrepancies) is constructed in an effort to study a particular procedure. A possible arguement is that investigation of many diseases has “indisputably relied heavily on animal experimentation” (Botting 1). While this may be true, it is also true that those animals were most likely treated cruelly. That statement also does not justify the continued use of animal testing in the future. Also, many advocates for animal testing argue that misleading results in studies done by testing animals were intentional. They claim that “such models provide a means to study a particular procedure” (Botting 1). This seems ludicrous, on the premise that testing a particular procedure is completely unrelated to testing a product for human consumption. The debate for animal testing is based on hypotheses and manipulation of facts to fit the pre-conceived notion that torturing animals for science is