Animal Testing in Scientific Research

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Animal Testing in Scientific Research Animal testing has been going on since the late nineteenth century. Over the years, billions of animals have been killed from experiments, but the amount of animals tested on has fallen 50% since 1968 and in 1998 reached a 40 year low of only 2.66 million procedures. With that much of a decline, I can’t imagine how many animals were once used and for what purposes. Even with the 50% decline, the number of animals sacrificed for medical and biomedical ends in the United States each year is unknown, but certainly exceeds 60 million and may possibly be as high as 100 million. That amount of animals sacrificed each year is horrible especially when a lot of the test turn out to be inaccurate. “Of animals currently being used today, about 80% of these are rats and mice, and less than 3% are cats and dogs while non-human primates account for 2%” (internet resource). While researchers do their jobs to find alternatives, one easy way anybody can help animals is start watching what they buy and make sure they aren’t indirectly supporting the cruelty to animals. Many corporations test on animals, but probably the largest is Proctor & Gamble. People may think they aren’t contributing to the torture of animals, but Proctor & Gamble has over a hundred everyday products that were at one time tested on. Some of their main products consist of Old Spice, Secret and Sure deodorants. “Testing cosmetics consist of placing rabbits in stocks that immobilize their heads and researchers dropping the substance into one eye, using the other as a control. The pain may be so great the rabbits break their backs trying to escape” (internet resource). In other experiments, “the animals may be force fed products or ... ... middle of paper ... ...e features. The last and most obvious alternative is humans themselves. Willingness to use alternative methods is increasing in industry, but many companies won’t be able to switch until new methods have been rubber-stamped by regulatory bodies, which still exhibits a huge conservatism. Until then, any alternative method no matter what it is should be taken in consideration. Cruel animal testing has gone on for many years. There are too many alternatives that can test the same way an animal can. With all the medicines that were tested to work but didn’t on humans, I wonder “how many potentially useful drugs have been needlessly abandoned because animal test falsely suggested inefficacy or toxicity” (internet resource). The killing of innocent animals is not the key to finding out if a product is harmful, whenever possible an alternative method should be used.

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