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Animal experimentation ethical treatment
Negative side effects of animal testing
The importance of animal experiments
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Imagine this: you are a rabbit that has been immobilized in full body restraints while a chemical is dripped into your eyes or smeared onto your shaved skin and with every drop the burning sensation is becoming more and more unbearable. Or imagine you are an immobilized mouse that is being forced to swim while being electrocuted to hopefully find a cure for stress (irony). Hello, today I am here to talk about Animal experimentation. Animal research is an extremely inhumane practice that should not be legal in the United States. Ever since the 1920s, animal experimentation has been used to test various drugs, household products and cosmetics. It is done to determine the toxic consequences, and possibly fatal side effects, of certain products …show more content…
Animals are forced to live in small, unsanitary cages where they undergo emotional and physical stress for anywhere from a couple months to a couple years. Animals are forced to inhale chemicals and are even strapped to tables and suffer through immense pain that leads to either death or severe side effects. Animals don’t always suffer from diseases that humans do so they are often infected with deadly diseases we don’t have cures to. Famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall reported, “In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense fear. The screaming I heard when chimpanzees were being forced to move toward the dreaded needle in their squeeze cages was, for me, absolutely horrifying” (“Harm and Suffering” 3). And I’m not even going to bring up the fact that animals in labs never get to go outside of their metal prisons (apophasis). And an investigation launched by PETA found that Holmes Farm, a massive animal mill in Pennsylvania, had thousands of animals confined to plastic bins stacked in shelve like filing cabinet drawers and were gassed to death with carbon dioxide in feces smeared containers while their screams could be heard from across the building (“Animals Frozen at Petco” 1). Mice are not pieces of paper. Bunnies are not pieces of paper. Hamsters are not pieces of paper. Animals are not pieces of paper (epistrophe). You can not file them away in confined shelving units, and let …show more content…
Many products that have been tested on animals actually cause harm to humans. We knowingly research products on animals, even though data shows that animal experimentation is not a reliable source. Using modern testing techniques such as Episkin, which is a model of human skin cells, we can detect how humans will react with a 95 percent accuracy rate. And Epiderm correctly detected all of the test chemicals that irritate human skin while tests on rabbits misclassified 10 out of 25 test chemicals (“Alternatives” 1) We can get results within minutes with modern tests where animal testing takes years and is very expensive. What happens when we desperately need a cure to a disease but we just wasted 3 years and billions of dollars trialing a drug that ended up not working in
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.
Although animal research is a shareholder in the development of medicine and the advance of cosmetic and household products, it is still not legitimate to abuse those creatures to satisfy human needs and wants. Alternatives have been initiated to relinquish the use of non-human beings since it is against animal rights. Animal testing should be prohibited and new methods should be introduced to non-medical institutions like the cosmetic industries and the household production enterprises. Laboratories should take ease of technology to supersede animals by upgraded alternatives that can help in the development of new treatments that may be more efficient. Personally, I think animal testing is a cruel nature that cannot be justified. Why sacrifice those defenseless lives if superior methods are available?
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. While animal testing has led to many life-saving cures, animal testing is cruel and inhumane because it involves inflicting pain and harm on the test subject to study its effects and remedies. Testing involves physically restraining, force-feeding, and depriving animals of food and water.
(Intro)Nonhuman Animal Experimentation is defined as the use of nonhuman animals in research and development projected for the sole purpose of determining the safety of substances such as foods or drugs. According to The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), scientific experiments have required animals to “inhale toxic fumes,... remain immobilized in restraint devices for hours,... suffer through the drilling of holes into their skulls,... withstand the burning of their skin,... and endure the agony caused from the crushing of their spinal cord”(“Animal experiments: overview,” n.d.). Testing harmful products on animals everyday creates a long lasting effect on the animals. That is to say, numbers of animals have been diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and have become so afraid of humans that they crawl into a corner everytime they see a person.
“According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and "killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means.”(Peta). Have you ever wondered if a product you own was safe to use? Did you know that millions of animals are tested on each year for the daily products you use? According to Peta, around 26 million animals are tested each year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing. Animals are used to develop medical treatments, determine the toxicity of medications, check the safety of products destined for human use, and other biomedical, commercial, and healthcare uses (Peta). Animals are harmed or sometimes even killed in this process. Animals are not the same as humans, therefore; the testing done on Animals is not helping our human society, it’s hurting the animals. There are alternative ways to performing testing rather than testing on animals.
“The question is not, can they reason, nor, can they talk. But can they suffer?” (Bentham). Each year over a hundred million animals endure a number of experiments in an attempt to make human lives easier. These experiments range from cosmetic testing to medical research, sadly neither of these tests are needed. Many people will accept animal research because they believe that these animals aren’t suffering (“Harm and Suffering”) or they believe that animal testing in beneficial to humans. In reality, these animals suffer for mankind, when the need does not exist. Animal testing creates unnecessary pain and suffering for animals, when in reality most experiments will not benefit human health.
In modern society, animal experimentation has triggered a controversy; consequently, vast amount of protests have been initiated by the animal rights community. Although these organizations have successfully broadcast their concerns toward animal experimentation, its application continues to survive. Sally Driscoll and Laura Finley inform that there remain fifty million to one-hundred million animals that experience testing or experimentation throughout the world on a yearly basis. But despite opposition, animal experimentation, the use of experiments on animals in order to observe the effects an unknown substance has on living creatures, serves multiple purposes. Those particular purposes are: research of the living body, the testing of products, and the advancement of medicine.
Imagine not having a choice and being used for experimenting without having any say at all. For everyone, this seems like a horrible nightmare; for animals this nightmare is their reality. It is unethical to sentence animals to life in a lab cage and to intentionally cause them excruciating pain. Industries even cram multiple animals at a time in a single cage where they are all subjected to food and water deprivation, forced feeding, forced inhalation, and long periods of phsycial restraint. Through the process, animals can be burned, poisoned, given diseases such as cancer, blinded, paralyzed and brain damaged. According to Humane Society International, most are even encountered with inflictions of burns and other wounds to examine the healing processes. Also with pain to study its effects caused from these experiments. These animals are rarely offered any form of pain relief, and in some cases, may be left to suffer until they eventually die. The poor, traumatized animals used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable lab equipment. Like humans, they can feel pain and fear. Just because they don't have the same abilities as humans doesn’t mean their life has any less value to them. That’s why these helpless and defenseless animals should stop being taken advantage of. The world does not need another mascara, shampoo, or household cleaning product so badly that it should come at
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.
Not only do we have other options for these tests, but animals testing has actually been proven to be ineffective. Companies claim that this sort of cruelty will benefit the human population by testing the “safety” of the products, as they have been for hundreds of years and although this may have been helpful in the past, scientists have discovered otherwise. “While funding for animal experimentation and the number of animals tested on continues to increase, the United States still ranks 49th in the world in life expectancy and second worst in infant mortality in the developed world” (“Animal Testing Is”). This evidence shows that while we still continue to support and spend money on animal testing, it is not working as well as we thought.Essentially we are torturing the animals for a negative outcome, both for the human and the animal. The Food and Drug Administration reports that “92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans” (“Top Five Reasons”). If the products and drugs that we are testing on the animals are not working then there is no use in harming a harmless animal for them. Some may disagree and say that animal testing has enabled us to develop many life saving treatments for both humans and animals. But in reality there has been more cons then pros in animal testing. For example, “Animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before being pulled from the market” (Should Animals Be). While animal testing has enabled us to create great products it is usually ineffective on humans and leads to animals being harmed for no
Every year, over 100 million animals are killed for experimentation, biology lessons, medical/military training, and cosmetic, drug, and chemical testing. Animals are tortured all over the world and still lack lawful protection.
Animal testing is one the most beyond cruelty against animals. It is estimated about 7 million innocent animals are electrocuted, blinded, scalded, force-fed chemicals, genetically manipulated, killed in the name of science. By private institutions, households products, cosmetics companies, government agencies, educational institutions and scientific centers. From the products we use every day, such as soap, make-up, furniture polish, cleaning products, and perfumes. Over 1 million dogs, cats, primates, sheep, hamsters and guinea pigs are used in labs each year. Of those, over 86,000 are dogs and cat. All companies are most likely to test on animals to make patients feel safe and are more likely to trust medicines if they know they have been tested on animals first (PETA, N.D, page 1). These tests are done only to protect companies from consumer lawsuits. Although it’s not quite true, Humans and animals don’t always react in the same way to drugs. In the UK an estimated 10,000 people are killed or severely disabled every year by unexpected reactions to drugs, all these drugs have passed animal tests. Animal testing is often unpredictable in how products will work on people. Some estimates say up to 92 percent of tests passed on animals failed when tried on humans (Procon.org, 2014, page 1). Animal testing can’t show all the potential uses for a drug. The test results are...
Simple household items such as lotions, shampoos and cosmetics aren’t very expensive and are within reach for the public, yet the public is not knowledgeable of the fact that the products that they use everyday are put through a series of tests which involve the use of harmless animals. Several large commercial companies do not make products for animals; they decide that using these harmless creatures for the testing of their products, could be cause to be harmful to animals still go forward with these types of procedures on an everyday basis. Although these animals are unable to defend themselves or signs of any form of consent for the near death procedures, these companies find this as a cheap solution for testing their products before placing them on the market. There are many other alternatives to testing animals such as embryonic stem cell research. Animal experimentation is wrong and it can be avoided but companies which are greedy for money chose not to.
The fact that animals are still used when animal experimentation is avoidable and not necessary makes animal testing unethical. According to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (2013), over one hundred million animals suffer and sometimes die from experiments to test chemicals, drugs, foods, and cosmetics (para 3). Although it is good that the companies are concerned that their products do not harm consumers, the law does not require most of these tests animals endure. Furthermore, these tests do not have accurate results, so the animals may suffer, but the product is still sold to the people. While products that burn bunnies’ eyes away are being marketed to consumers, government agencies are using taxpayers’ hard-earned money to fund these horrible, pointless experiments.
Animals are used in research to develop new medicines and for scientists to test the safety of the medicines. This animal testing is called vivisection. Research is being carried out at universities, medical schools and even in primary and elementary schools as well as in commercial facilities which provide animal experiments to industry. (UK Parliament) In addition, animals are also used in cosmetic testing, toxicology tests, “defense research” and “xenotransplantation”. All around the world, a huge amount of animals are sentenced to life in a laboratory cage and they are obliged to feel loneliness and pain. In addition scientists causing pain, most drugs that pas successfully in animals fail in humans. It is qualified as a bad science. Above all, animals have rights not to be harmed even though the Animal Welfare Act does not provide them even with minimal protection. The law does not find it necessary to use current alternatives to animals, even if they are obtainable. Animal testing should be banned due to animal rights, ethical issues, alternative ways and the unreliability of test results in humans.