Animal Testing And Animal Cruelty

The US National Institute of Health spends $14 billion out of their $31 billion annual budget on animal researching(Humane Society International; Conlee; US National Institutes of Health). Animal testing has become a very controversial topic to discuss. Experimenting on animals is cruel because even though there are alternative ways to test people still believe that testing on the animals is a better way to do things. Acts of cruelty against the animals, and the fact that animals are different from humans seem to be big issues in the controversy. There are alternative ways to test for products other than testing the animals. There have been horrible acts of animal cruelty that violates the Animal Welfare Act’s laws, and the last
Scientist have found a way to collect better results by using human cells instead of animals’. Since the products are used on humans, why not use human cells? For example, in glass testing, studying cell cultures in a Petri dish, can produce better results than testing animals because human cells would be tested (Rogers). Using the Petri dish to better study human cells is worthwhile. Some scientists use chemicals when working with the animals, but in result the outcome is not as accurate as it can be if the scientists used human skin cells. Artificial human skin is made with sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells. This process gives more useful results than testing chemicals on animals (Rogers; Watts; Axonn News Agency). Lastly, evidence shows that the new form of testing can predict the toxicity levels of products without performing acts on the animals that can lead to injuries. Microfluidic chips, organs on a chip, which are lined with human cells and recreate the functions of human organs, are in very advanced stages of development. These computers will be able to predict the toxicity of substances without cruel testing on the animals (Watts). Many people may argue that as useful as it can be to study the cultural cells, it also takes away the opportunity to study the interrelated systems,
This means that animals are not being cared for correctly in some situations during testing. In New Iberia animal cruelty cases were found by the AWA(US Food and Drug Administration). For example, the Humane Society of the United States found 338 possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the Federally funded New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana. Louisiana had acted out too many times against the AWA and was fortunately caught doing so. There have been such mind blowing acts against these innocent animals. Some primates that were held in NIRC suffered from such severe psychological stress that they were, “tearing gaping wounds into their arms and legs.” Video shows chimps screaming as they were being forcibly removed from their mothers, and being shot with a dart gun.(Humane Society of the United States) These actions are beyond cruel. To continue this, more evidence has been found in a science center in Louisiana. In 2011 a sight found at the Davis Center for Neuroscience was horrific. “Three baby mice were found sealed alive in a plastic baggie and left unattended [on a laboratory counter,]” says Sacramento Bee(Marjie Lundstrom). The three baby mice were just left to die in such a horrible way after testing. On the other hand, people might suggest that in order for products to be sold in China, the scientists must test these products to ensure the safety of them. However, the amount