Most household families treat their pets as a family member. These family pets are showered with love, care, have a good home, and plenty of food to eat. But not all animals are as lucky as many household pets. Millions of animals are killed, poisoned, and abused from animal testing each year in the Unites States. Just last year the European Union banned the sale of any cosmetic ingredients that have been tested on animals. Also joining the fight against animal testing in cosmetics is Israel and India. These countries have banned all testing on animals for cosmetic purposes. China, not far behind, has just approved their first non-animal test for cosmetics. Many countries are making strides in eliminating animal testing for cosmetics or have already done so, but the United States seems to be falling short. The FDA defines cosmetics as "articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body...for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance" [FD&C Act, sec. 201(i)]. This definition includes moisturizers, perfumes, makeup, hair products, and cleansing products. None of these products are essential for a human’s existence, but we produce them on a mass scale daily and the consequences are disturbing. The most common animals used in cosmetic testing are mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, but dogs, cats, primates, birds, fish, and amphibians are no stranger to animal testing. These animals go through excruciating testing for cosmetics, including but not limited to, skin and eye irritation tests, repeated force-feeding studies, and LD50 tests. These tests are considered toxicity tests and are extremely cruel... ... middle of paper ... ...r testing products. EpiSkin™, EpiDerm™ and SkinEthic can save thousands of animals a year by eliminating the skin corrosion and irritation tests. The Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability Test and the Isolated Chicken Eye Test are also examples of alternatives to animal research. These alternatives use eyes from animals slaughtered for the meat industry. These animals’ carcasses are usually just thrown away, wasting much of the animal. Instead, these usually discarded animals can now be used to test a chemical’s irritation to eyes. Though it is still an animal test, these two alternatives could save thousands of live rabbits that would be used in Draize test. The Reduced Local Lymph Node Assay for skin allergy testing can eliminate the need of testing guinea pigs and mice. This method has already reduced animal use in skin irritation testing by 75 percent.
Every year over 100 million animals die in the US; the cause for these deaths, animal testing. This injustice to animals involves testing products such as medical drugs or makeup, on poor imprisoned animals that don’t have the ability to stand for their own rights as most of us do. Animals used for testing are given products that may result in burning, poisoning, or death. These animals are forced to live in confined spaces where they wait until the next horrible experiment. They are, tortured beyond imagination as they are sometimes even cut open while they are alive (know as vivisection), either with expired analgesics or even without them.
She sits alone in a threadbare, chilly, metal cage. Her eyes dart around wondering when the next torture will commence. If the testing fails to kill her, the stress definitely will. Entering is the doctor who plans to perform an eye irritancy test. The rabbit’s eyes will be held open with clips for at least three days if she survives that long (“Frequently Asked Questions”). Similarly, if these procedures would be performed on a human, they would be considered illegal. Yet, scientists continue to make harmless animals suffer incessantly. Annually, countless animals are abused in American test labs; however, alternative practices should be implemented in order to participate in worldwide trade, save innocent lives, and provide more accurate data.
SUMMARIZE: The article grants information on new models in cosmetics to take the place of animal experimentation. It goes on to talk about how the European Union has now banned using animal-based test for cosmetic reasoning. Pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies have been using computer-like tools to assess the toxicity it has for years. The author incorporates information on cosmetics and the outlook on further research. ‘According to experts, combination of laboratory-based with virtual work will be the future of testing and is progressing faster than they expected.” (87 words)
This theme song to a popular cartoon is a farce dealing with experiments carried out on animals. In the cartoon one mouse is made very smart and wants to take over the world while the other is clearly not as smart. While the cartoon makes jokes, the reality is that mice and other animals re being used for medical tests every day. For some people this testing brings up ethical questions. One of the biggest questions: is it really necessary to take the lives of animals in the name of science and for the betterment of humanity? For animal rights activists, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the answer is no. PETA pressures labs into halting experiments because they believe that animals are not to be used by humans for "food, clothing, entertainment, or to experiment on" (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals 1). Its stance is that any testing is painful, inhumane, and unnecessary when alternatives are available. The PETA website says that "animals, like humans, have interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded away simply because it might benefit others." (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals 2-3). Essentially, PETA is of the opinion that animals and humans should have identical rights. In their press releases PETA puts out pictures of rabbits with open flesh wounds and dogs with rashes on their skins--all in an attempt to disgust people into sympathy for their cause. In actuality the number of lab animals used has been cut in half in the last 25 years (James-Enger 254). Of the animals used, 90 percent are rats and mice (James-Enger 1). Moreover, 11 million animals die each year in animal shelters (Americans for Medical Progress 2) and an astounding 95 percent ...
...ts on animals. China is also in the process of decreasing the amount of animal tested products in circulation as well (“Cosmetics and House-Hold Products Animal Testing”). Even though there are alternatives to using animals in this testing, companies in the United States still continue to torture animals for the sake of beauty. There are plenty more ways to experiment with products that do not involve animals in any way, and these tests also produce more reliable information. According to Earth Protect, Tests like this are often cheaper and produce faster results than animal research ever has. For example, there is a model of human cornea tissues that can be subject to eye irritation experiments instead of a rabbit, and there are models of skin cells that can be used for skin irritation tests instead of guinea pigs (“Cosmetic Animal Testing Facts and Alternatives”).
The use of animals to test cosmetics is introduced in their article as well. The authors quote a vast amount of credible sources from prestigious universities such as Princeton and from well known animal rights group such as PETA. I will use this as my main source of information.
From when you are a baby to when you are an adult animal testing is used in your everyday products. Products like cosmetics, detergents, and chemicals are examples of products that are being tested to ensure safety of people. The usual approach to ensure that safety is to pump a substance into an animal’s stomach or airways, or apply it to their eyes or on their skin (“Cosmetic”). Most of these tests are crude. According to American Anti-Vivisection Society, nearly 100 million animals are being used every year in the United States as models in biological and medical research to study human disease, injury, development, psychology, anatomy and physiology (“Animals”).
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.
Animal testing has been used for developing and researching cures for medical conditions. For example, the polio vaccine, chemotherapy for cancer, insulin treatment for diabetes, organ transplants and blood transfusions are just some of the important advances that have come from research on animals (“Animal Testing”). Consuming animals for research benefits in developing various treatments and also benefits in discovery better methods for cures. According to the article “Animal Testing”, it says that the underlying rationale for the use of animal testing is that living organisms provide interactive, dynamic systems that scientists can observe and manipulate in order to understand normal and pathological functioning as well as the effectiveness of medical interventions. It relies on the physiological and anatomical similarities between humans and other animals (MacClellan, Joel). Meaning that animals have the same body components and features as humans and is the best thing to research on to better understand the human development. Even though several argue that animal testing is harming the animals, one has to think back to all the benefits that has come from it. There may be a little remorse for endangering animal lives, but realizing how far medicine has come makes it worth the while.
Throughout history, beginning as early as 500 BC, animals have been used to test products that will later be utilized by humans (“Animal Testing” 4), what isn’t publicly discussed is the way it will leave the animals after the process is done. Many innocent rabbits, monkeys, mice, and even popular pets such as dogs are harmed during the testing application of cosmetics, medicine, perfumes, and many other consumer products (Donaldson 2). Nevertheless, there are many people whom support the scandal because "it is a legal requirement to carry out animal testing to ensure they are safe and effective” for human benefit (Drayson). The overall question here is should it even be an authorized form of experimentation in the United States, or anywhere else? The fact of the matter is that there are alternatives to remove animals out of the equation for good (“Alternatives” 1). They are cheaper, and less invasive than the maltreatment of the 26 million innocent animals that are subjected to the heartlessness of testing each year (“Animal Testing” 4). All in all, due to the harsh effects of animal testing, it should be treated as animal cruelty in today’s society.
The Cruelty of Cosmetic Testing on Animals Each year, thousands of animals are brutally tortured in laboratories, in the name of cosmetic research. A movement to ban animal testing for cosmetic purposes has been gaining popularity, with many companies hopping on the bandwagon against this research. New alternatives have been developed to eliminate the need to test on animals. This is only a small beginning of what is necessary to end these immoral acts. Animal testing in cosmetics is useless and cruel, and can be accomplished by other methods of research to end the suffering of animals.
Using dogs in cosmetics testing should be illegal. How many of you have dogs? Well you must have already known that mice and monkeys are used for cosmetics testing. But did you know dogs are used for testing too. Cosmetics like mascara and eyeliner are tested on dogs before they are put on store shelves. More than 65,000 dogs are held in U.S. laboratories each year, with over 25,000 subjected to painful experiments. And 95% of the dogs tested were not protected by the Federal Animal Welfare Act. When testing dogs, they often apply the cosmetics to their eyes and skins to show how it would affect a human. Beagles are the most the popular breed to use because they adapt well to living in cages, and are inexpensive to feed. The laboratories get
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 term “animal testing” refers to experimentations on living animals for the purpose of research into biology and illnesses, assessing effectiveness of new medicinal products, and testing the human health and environmental safety of consumer and industry products such as cosmetics, ...
It is now required by law that cosmetics are tested for safety before being made available to the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of overseeing drug and cosmetic testing today. Animal testing was the most widespread form of cosmetic testing considered proven, but the technology that is now available may replace the need for animal test...