A problem/solution essay on Animal Testing, and why it is wrong.

Put a Halt on Animal Testing

Humans to this day find themselves dominant over animals. The world is becoming less aware of the pain and suffering being afflicted on animals. As a result, animals are becoming more and more downtrodden in society. Humans still continue to treat animals as if they are poverty. As if we can own animals and therefore control their lives and what happens to them. I find this very immoral. Animals are here for themselves. Just like humans, they have their own lives, in which they can think, feel, require love, reproduce, and have families. Many people are unaware that humans are biologically classified under the Animal Kingdom. Even though we do differ in external appearance and intelligence, we are animals. Humans see themselves superior to rats, mice, monkeys and other lab animals. According to evolution, we grew from all these animals. Yet we test drugs and products on these relatives.

"More than 205,000 new drugs are marketed worldwide every year, most undergo the most archaic and unreliable testing methods still in use: animal studies" (PETA). Animals may seem like the ideal specimens for testing new drugs, but the experiments are untrustworthy and cause unknown side effects. Animals have helped form useful medicines for humans like anesthesia; they have also helped put dangerous drugs on the market (AMPEF). Animal testing is plainly unnecessary and downright cruel. Testing anything on animals, and putting them at harm, for this animal testing should be outlawed.

If you think that animal testing is an effective way to give humans accurate results on whether a product will harm us or not, well think again. Practolol, a drug for heart disorders which passed animal testing was pulled off the shelves when the drug was found to cause blindness in people. Arsenic, which is toxic and causes cancer in humans, has not cause cancer in any animals that were tested (PETA). It 's a fact that animals sometimes have the same reactions to a disease or drug as humans do, but usually they experience different effects. There is no way for experimenters to notice the psychological effects on tested animals. Animals can 't express how they feel and what they are experiencing. With Milrinore, a drug that raises cardiac output, increased survival of rats with artificially induced heart failure. But with humans taking this drug who had severe chronic heart failure had a 30% increase in death (PETA). Every species has their own differences; it 's hard to predict any side effects that well occur in all animals. It 's known that rats and mice are used for most experiments, yet they share very little of out DNA. Even using chimpanzees, which shares 98% of our DNA make up, won 't greatly influence the accuracies of the experiments enough to make them effective. In example, scientists have dosed over 100 chimpanzees with AIDS the human virus, but none have developed human AIDS (Thacher 1). Many people assume that humans are intelligently advanced over all other animals and that 's why their lives can be sacrificed. However, Koko the gorilla has an IQ of 80, which is only 20 points lower than the average human. This makes her intelligence above mentally challenged people (Gorilla). For this, one cannot factor intelligence level for who partakes in scientific and medical experiments.

Animal experimentation is not the only way to make significant progress in the medical field. In fact, other methods have been proven to be less time consuming, less costly and provide more accurate results. When testing is less time consuming, the companies don 't have to pay as much out to their employees. When it is less costly, in the outcome there is more money left for future progression in their products. With the results being more accurate, the quality is better, which will ultimately attract more consumers. Such are the following methods; "epidemiological studies, clinical intervention trials, astute clinical observation aided by laboratory testing, human tissue and cell cultures, autopsy studies, endoscopic examination and biopsy, as well as new imaging methods" (Barnard and Kaufman 81). Scientists make progress in studying virus ' and diseases such as AIDS virus when they use almost any other experimentation method other than animal experimenting.

Animal testing does not solve medical problems and it does not help out county progress in the medical field. Contrary to what majority of the human population believes, animals are not the ideal specimens to test cures for diseases. The only real animal that will give us accurate results in our experiments is a human. Experimenting drugs on animals can result in keeping safe drugs off the market and dangerous drugs obtainable. Animal testing is unreliable. People should not depend on the information given out about a drug according to an animal test. Now with alternative ways to test products, animal testing is unnecessary. The other methods for getting results are moral, practical, effective and less expensive. All animal testing should stop and be outlaw, for it 's not essential in this day in age.

Works Cited

Animal Testing. Americans For Medical Progress. 26 Oct. 2003

Barnard, Neal, and Stephen Kaufman. "Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading." Scientific American. Feb. 1997: 80-82

Gorilla Foundation - Koko the Gorilla. 24 Oct. 2003

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 24 Oct. 2003

Thacher, Wendy. "Chimpanzees: Test Results That Don 't Apply to Humans". PCRM Animal Experimentation Issues. 25 Oct. 2003.

Cited: Animal Testing. Americans For Medical Progress. 26 Oct. 2003 Barnard, Neal, and Stephen Kaufman. "Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading." Scientific American. Feb. 1997: 80-82 Gorilla Foundation - Koko the Gorilla. 24 Oct. 2003 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 24 Oct. 2003 Thacher, Wendy. "Chimpanzees: Test Results That Don 't Apply to Humans". PCRM Animal Experimentation Issues. 25 Oct. 2003.