Each year millions of animals are maimed, genetically manipulated and otherwise killed or hurt due to animal experimentation. This is, however, an utterly controversial issue with a great deal of emotions and ideas regarding the ethics of this practice.
Animal experimentation has been around for centuries and was repeatedly used throughout the history of biomedical research. Nonetheless, the ethical revival of realization on the moral status of animals only began in the 1970’s. Today it is a multi-billion dollar industry, encompassing institutions, cosmetics companies and scientific centers all over the world.
To begin with, cruel companies expose animals to chemicals that may cause painful eye and skin irritation, developmental abnormalities, cancer and death. The pain from such tests can be excruciating, yet animals are typically not given pain relief, as the ‘scientists’ fear anesthetics could affect the toxicity of the chemicals being tested. So the animals are left to languish in pain.
In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals that are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment.
George Bernard Shaw, an Irish critic and political activist, once said “Vivisection is a total evil because it advances human knowledge; it does so at the expense of human character.”
Nowadays, the development of new procedures has changed the need to test on animals, yet it is continued in vain. Moreover, the use of animals in teaching at all levels of secondary and tertiary education is still widespread whereas more humane and advanced alternatives could be used.
Furthermore Professor Charles R Magel once said: “Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: 'Because animals are