Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, is the use of animals in experiments to test product safety. I believe it is a big problem in our society. Every year at least 2.7 million animals are killed in laboratories in Australia alone and at least thirty-three animals die each second worldwide, due to cruel animal tests. Many companies feel it is okay to test on animals because they are deemed not as physiologically or emotionally complex as humans, but as animal rights supporter, Jeremy Bentham has said, “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’ and most of the time the animals do suffer.
So, what do scientists test on animals? The main three things that are tested are cosmetics, household products and medicines. 94% of animal testing is done to test cosmetic safety, confectionary and household products which leaves only 6% for beneficial medical research. During these experiments, products are tested on animals to check for any skin irritancy, eye irritancy and allergies that could cause problems for humans. These procedures are often excruciatingly painful for the animals over prolonged periods of time, and then most are ultimately destroyed after the experiment.
Compounding concerns are that these experiments are often unreliable because animals have a different body structure and different DNA, which means that sometimes these experiments are more detrimental than helpful to human health. In simple terms, if your dog was ill, do you think you could cure it by conducting research on yourself? Since it is not possible to cure a sick animal by conducting research on healthy humans, why would we consider it possible to cure a sick human by conducting research on a healthy animal? Research reveals that only 5 to 25% of the animal tests and human results are agreeable! Most of the drugs passed by animal tests are now discarded as useless to humans – so why test