Animal Testing Should Be Banned

Animal Testing Should be Banned
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Experiments on animals has been done all around the world since many years ago throughout the history. There are reasons behind these experiments; such as gaining knowledge about the animals themselves, education, research and developments for the benefit of human being. In the last reason fall substances and procedures tests; such as for cosmetic products, medicines, and surgical techniques; to see if they are harmful to humans or not. Many experiments that has been conducted involved quite some numbers of animals, with the majority of them being euthanized at the end of the research period. Not to mention a lot of misconducted researches, the law to protect animals from being used for testing, the rate of success in comparison of animal and human, and the existence of other alternatives to conduct research and testing for the same purposes. This became a problem for some people, as they think that it is not acceptable to conduct animal testing, especially for such thing as cosmetic products that is technically has no correlation between the animals and the continuance of human life. Many people think that scientists are doing every experiments that are necessary to make human lives better. That includes animal testing, which is approved by many people, as they believe that those tests are necessary. That thought is not wrong, but it 's not exactly right too. Nowadays there are some cases of misconducted research done by scientists with totally irrelevant basis. According to Massachusetts Animal Rights Coalition (n.d.), Harvard researchers perform some unnecessary and inhumane procedures at the New England Regional Primate Research Center, such as destroying areas of the brains of live monkeys with chemicals, injecting foreign genes and substances into the monkeys, performed some unsuccessful transplantation between two different species, and many more. Those are some examples of irrelevant and inhumane experiment that has nothing to do with the sake of the continuance of human life. Another thing that bothers the society is that even though there is law that protects animals in research such as The Animal Welfare Act (AWA), it ensure animals in the labs to be treated humanely and provides minimal protection for certain species excluding some animals that often bred for research. It frustrated a lot of people over their inability to protect animals because of how weak the law is as scientists could slip past through what obviously looks like an animal cruelty however there is nothing much that they can do to make a difference as there are many loopholes that leave animals with little to no protection. In the end, even with some protections that is maintained by law, millions of animals still suffer and die in tragically under some brutal experiments. The law still provide no real safety to all animals in labs and offers false sense of security to society who cares. Next thing that is also important is the success rate of the experiments on animals in correlation to humans. According to Animal Aid (2012), ”many drugs, which have been safety-tested in animals go on to cause serious side-effects, including death, in people.” There were many experiments that proven to be successful on animal but later on was recalled for safety issues or harmful side effects, same goes for products that have to be withdrawn from distributions. This proven that animal testing is not very reliable, but why? Animals might have different reactions to a product as a human would as they don 't need some things that human might needed. According to Vivisection Information Network (2010), “in the periods 1978-1988, twenty-five drugs were found to treat stroke in animals. The number that worked in humans was found to be zero[9].” This is one of many cases where an experiment is a big success on animals but harmful or ineffective on humans, and the other way around. Many products like oral care, body care and beauty care are tested on animals, even household cleaning products. In comparison to medical products, those aren 't as important to the continuance of human life. Ironically, nowadays the majority of animal testing are conducted for those purpose rather than medical purpose. There is no point in putting cosmetics on animals or testing new food ingredients to animals, make them suffer just to know if they are safe for humans. What is more surprising is that not many people know that those products are tested on animals before they are distributed. What is more important than those are the experiment methods that they use to those animals. There is acute toxicity tests where animals are forced to eat or inhale or absorbs a product or chemical substance and being left suffered until they die while the scientists are studying the reaction during that period. There is also eye and skin irritation/corrosion tests called the Draize Test. “During this test, rabbits are often immobilized in full-body restraints while a substance is dripped or smeared into their eyes or onto their shaved skin. Laboratory technicians then record the damage at specific intervals for hours or days. Rabbits may suffer swollen eyelids, irritated and cloudy eyes, and inflamed skin, and in the case of irreversible corrosive damage, they may endure ulcers, bleeding, bloody scabs, or blindness.” (PETA, n.d.). These tests are unnecessary, insufficient and more over, inhumane. There are other ways to conduct research and test without animals. They take less time to complete, effective, affordable, unaffected by species differences and quite humane. Some of the methods are stem cell test, 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test, human skin model test, leftover human skin from surgical procedures, microdosing, scanning technology, computer modeling techniques and some other techniques. These techniques have been proven to be if not as effective, more effective than animal experiments. As a matter of fact, “Ninety-five percent of medical schools across the U.S. have completely replaced the use of animal laboratories in medical training with sophisticated human-patient simulators, virtual-reality systems, computer simulators, and supervised clinical experience.” (PETA, n.d.) In conclusion, animal testing is cruel, incredibly costly, not really necessary, unreliable, inaccurate, and harmful. There are cases of violation to the experiment procedures, the lost of importance and priority, inhumane and plainly brutal. No animals should be forced to endure such terrifying experience. Animals become testing subject to things that are not related to their well-being and mainly for human satisfaction and the need of something that is not very important, such as cosmetics. There are alternatives such as computer models and in-vitro tests that has been proved to be effective, and more affordable than animal testing.

References

Killing Animals and Humans. (2012). In AnimalAid. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/experiments/ALL/730/
Primates are Suffering...... in Harvard Labs. (n.d.). In MassachusettsAnimalRightsCoalition. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.massanimalrights.org/harvardprimateflier.html
Code of Federal Regulations. (2009, January 1). In AnimalWelfareInformationCenter. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2009-title9-vol1/xml/CFR- 2009-title9-vol1-chapI-subchapA.xml
Alternatives to Animal Testing. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-to-animal- testing.aspx
Product Testing: Toxic and Tragic. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Experimentation/product-testing-toxic- tragic.aspx
Alternatives: Testing Without Torture. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-testing- without-torture.aspx
Is Animal Testing Better Than Pure Guesswork? (2010). In VivisectionInformationNetwork. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.vivisectioninformation.com/index.php? p=1_5_Is-animal-testing-better-than-pure-guesswork

References: Killing Animals and Humans. (2012). In AnimalAid. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/experiments/ALL/730/ Primates are Suffering...... in Harvard Labs. (n.d.). In MassachusettsAnimalRightsCoalition. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.massanimalrights.org/harvardprimateflier.html Code of Federal Regulations. (2009, January 1). In AnimalWelfareInformationCenter. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2009-title9-vol1/xml/CFR- 2009-title9-vol1-chapI-subchapA.xml Alternatives to Animal Testing. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-to-animal- testing.aspx Product Testing: Toxic and Tragic. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Experimentation/product-testing-toxic- tragic.aspx Alternatives: Testing Without Torture. (n.d.). In PETA. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-testing- without-torture.aspx Is Animal Testing Better Than Pure Guesswork? (2010). In VivisectionInformationNetwork. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from: http://www.vivisectioninformation.com/index.php? p=1_5_Is-animal-testing-better-than-pure-guesswork