Animal Testing in Laboratories

Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in U.S. labs every year. 92 percent of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work. Labs that use mice, rats, birds, reptiles and amphibians are exempted from the minimal protections under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Up to 90 percent of animals used in U.S. labs aren’t counted in the official statistics of animals tested. The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years.

Even animals that are protected under the AWA can be abused and tortured. And the law doesn’t require the use of valid alternatives to animals, even if they are available. According to the Humane Society, registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12, 000 animals. Several cosmetic tests commonly performed on mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs include: skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed on shaved skin or dripped into the eyes without any pain relief. repeated force-feeding studies that last weeks or months, to look for signs of general illness or specific health hazards. widely condemned “lethal dose” tests, where animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to determine what dose causes death. In tests of potential carcinogens, subjects are given a substance every day for two years. Others tests involve killing pregnant animals and testing their fetuses. The real life applications for some of the tested substances are as trivial as an “improved” laundry detergent, new eye shadow, or