By: Rachel Xue
Imagine being hooked up to a strange machine, having no idea what is happening to you, and being physically tormented. Imagine being tied down to a metal table with a bright light beaming on you and having harmful chemicals being put on you. You would be denied of everything: your rights, love, and care.
This was the everyday life of a lab animal. Humans hurt animals physically, emotionally, and mentally through animal testing. Animal testing has been used for thousands of years. The use of animal testing has been used for many different things: chemical, food, cosmetics, and specifically, medical testing. Many scientists and doctors use animals to test out new treatments and medications to see if there are any harmful effects to it. They haven’t used other methods to test these because they think that the results aren’t as effective. They have used animal testing for so long, so they trust this method and some products have reacted to animals that have reacted to people.
Although animal testing has been used for a long time and is the most “effective” way to test things in some situations, does it mean that it is okay to strip animals of their rights and hurt them? Just because animals can’t talk and can’t defend themselves doesn’t mean that they should be suffering. It doesn’t give us the right to enslave them. We abuse these animals for the sake of new medical advancements for our own species, and it’s completely wrong.
Many people believe that we need to test on animals. However, it’s not necessary with all these alternatives available. There are so many reasons to not test new potential treatments on animals. The most important reason is because there are already alternatives to test medication. There are almost 50 different alternatives to animal testing. Doctors could use human blood to test for the presence of fever-causing contaminants in medicines. This could save thousands of rabbits lives.
Another alternative is using EpiSkin, EpiDerm, and SkinEthic. Each is artificial human skin, so dermatologist can test different creams for skin irritation. Using Reduced Local Lymph Node Assay, an alternative test method for skin allergy, can save thousands of guinea pigs and mice from being harmed. All these alternatives can be used, so why aren’t we using them?
Since there are other ways to test meds, animals shouldn’t be subjected to this cruel treatment. It’s inhumane to keep testing on them and making them suffer. These alternatives would save so many lives and would end pain for a lot of animals, so what is preventing people from trying them?
The amount of animals’ lives destroyed in the United States alone is astounding and deeply disturbing. Animal testing is very unethical. About 25 million animals are killed per year in the United States from animal testing solely for medical uses and over 100 million animals total are killed per year in the United States from animal testing in general. Multiple animals such as dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, and others are used, abused, damaged, and harmed for our own medical benefits. They aren’t even treated like animals anymore. They are reduced to objects, alive for the sole purpose of a product. Through all this testing, they experience various types of physical pain: burned skin, brain damage, poisoning from toxicity testings, blindness, and others. These levels of pain can cause them to go crazy, and some even try to kill themselves to end of the never ending pain.
After suffering through these protocols, they continue to suffer in their everyday lab lives. They spend their lives in small barren cages indoors surrounded by loud noises and bright lights. Some are never exposed to sunlight or fresh air. Scientists and doctors feel like they can do all these crazy tests on them, but they are still living beings, even if they can’t communicate back to us. A majority of animals used in experiments are killed from the test. Either way, the lives of these animals were never good to begin with. They were in pain for a majority of their life. Think about how terrible if your pet was being tested on.
The amount of chemicals and products used on your pet would be a nightmare for most pet owners. It would hurt them emotionally and physically. Seeing the blood, the scars, and the bones of your pet would be an excruciating sight. It’s not right to do so many terrible things to these poor creatures who can’t even defend themselves and don’t have anyone to help them.
Not only is animal testing cruel, but it is ineffective in most cases. According to the Food and Drug Administration, 92 out of 100 drugs that are passed by animal tests fail on humans. This means that a majority of the time, the animal’s results don’t affect the prediction of how the drug will affect humans. Animal experimenters are just wasting lives and resources. We might as well just test the drugs on people directly, and we do. No matter how many different animals are tested on, a human will sooner or later test it. This would save many animals’ lives and would not waste time. The point is that if animal testing can’t predict the results of the drug on humans, then why keep testing on them? It’s useless. It would be better to just save the middle men (or in this case, animals) and go directly to the source.
Some people would say, “Why is the life of one animal more important than the life of mine or my sick grandmother’s life?” The life of an animal isn’t more important, but it’s just as important. Humans have a very warped sense of life importance. We think we are more important because we are more “superior” to other animals; therefore we would do anything to save ourselves before any other species.
The truth is that animals and humans both have the same level of importance. If they weren’t as important, why do we treat our pets like humans? Why do some worry about the extinction of other species? Why do we rely on chickens, pigs, cows, etc. for our food source? If they weren’t important, we wouldn’t touch them.
Just because we are able to control the destiny of some animals’ lives doesn’t mean that we should take their lives for unnecessary procedures. Animals’ lives are just as important as ours and killing them to save ourselves is not right. Some humans also think that animals can’t feel pain, but they indeed can.
“Animals and humans share similar mechanisms of pain detection and similar areas of the brain involved in processing pain and show similar pain behaviours.” (Sneddon) So although they may not be able to communicate to a human that they are hurting, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t suffering. If humans were to test products on solely humans, the pain felt would be the same pain felt by the lab animal. So until humans are able to test these products and be able to take in the pain, animals shouldn’t go through suffering.
Although you may not be able to stop animal testing everywhere, there are ways for you to limit animal testing. One way is by protesting. Writing letters to doctors, vets, or scientists will raise awareness to them that the customer doesn’t feel comfortable with the fact that they are using animals to test the results of their medication. If multiple people write to them, it might create a big impact and cause the doctor/vet/scientist to stop testing the medication on animals.
Another way is to boycott using the products. If the medication isn’t necessary or if there is another medication that doesn’t test on animals, don’t use the product that tests on animals. If you are truly against animal testing, just doing one of these things will create a small effect, which may lead to a bigger effect.
Animal testing is dangerous to animals. It can hurt them physically and mentally. Testing on animals has no point. If there are alternatives to testing on animals, why not use these different methods? If they are considered unethical, why do humans continue to do this to test on them? Hurting these animals can be avoided and should be avoided.
Society should prevent animal testing from continuing; it’s not fair to any animals to get hurt for our own benefits. Imagine if you were in their shoes. Animals should live their lives naturally and not be killed because of humans. Even if you hate animals, they don’t deserve to be treated that way, so we should be protecting them, not destroying them.
