Scientists Should Not Use Animal Testing As a Source for Experimentation

Imagine a world where humans are tortured by laboratory scientists, beaten with sharp tools, and abused with lethal drugs. According to the ASPCA, over 100 million animals are burned, paralyzed, and poisoned in a year at US laboratories. Just because animals do not have a voice, it doesn’t mean that scientists can perform experimental, and quite possibly lethal drugs on them. The majority of the time, experiments done on animals are inaccurate; only 5%-25% of the drugs succeeds with animals and humans, both. Most drugs found to be successful in animals usually fail in human clinical tests. Scientists around the world should not use animal testing as their source for experimentation because it is unethical and immoral to the animals, unreliable, ineffective.

Experimentation done on animals is inhumane and brutal. According to the Humane Society, animals in laboratories are force fed, burned, and deprived of food and water for long periods of time to see the healing process in drugs. The USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, states that that animals that participated in experimentation were given no anesthetics to ease the pain. To test one pesticide requires over 50 experiments which uses over 12,000 animals. The Humane Society is the largest and most effective nationwide company that protects animals against abuse and cruelty by enforcing laws, campaigns to further aware the public, and provides urgent animal rescue and emergency response. The Humane Society has been caring and sheltering for all types of animals since 1954 and through their efforts, the society has created campaigns for stopping puppy mills, protection for fighting dogs, and enforcing many other movements with success.

Cries stopping animal testing abuse have also been heard in today’s pop culture. The cosmetics company, Lush, created a performance and direct reenactment of the cruelty happening in a laboratory. Jacqueline Traide, a genuine activist against animal testing, volunteered her time and her body to demonstrate animal experimentation in front of live street shoppers. Her abuse was shown through an open, clear window at London’s Regents Street Lush and now easily seen by the world on Youtube. The scientist clipped her mouth open, forcing gels and salves down her throat and cutting her skin and pouring liquid over the open cut to look for any signs of severe burn. Throughout the entire day, Jacqueline endured this cruelty and influenced many of Lush’s shoppers to be aware that animal testing is happening and is killing more animals by the second. Outside of the shop, Lush employees asked the signatures of mortified shoppers for a petition against Parliament’s acceptance of animal testing and to stop it.

While I was watching this video, I cringed and felt uncomfortable through all of it. This truly shows how cruel animal testing really is and gives the public eye a perception and a deeper look into what animals go through. Because humans are not often tested on, we don’t know the first-hand experience of the truth about the abuse behind testing. Additionally, I had to skip through parts of the video because it was too much for me the stand. Most people are ignorant to what happens in a lab and when they see it, they look away and pretend that it’s not happening. Ignorance is bliss, but if everyone was ignorant towards all important causes the world would blissfully continue to test on animals or abuse them and sooner or later, there would be no animals and it would be too late for us to fix this overdue problem.

Usually, testing on animals is incredibly inaccurate because essentially, we are two different species, human and animal. Paul Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University, states, “It’s very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we’re trying to achieve in the human.” There are so many changing and differing variables between human and animal that it is hard to develop a that sustains for both. Additionally, tests that prove to be safe for animals are 94% not safe for human use. Dr. Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH, neurologist and public health specialist specifies that in 100 stroke drugs experimented on animals, 85 HIV vaccines were found to be unsuccessful on humans and primates.

There are many ways that animal testing can be proved ineffective, first being that animals do not share the same diseases and bodily organs as humans do. A study found in Science magazine found that rats lack the important protein that controls blood sugar. This shows that even if we perform countless experiments on animals, we still don’t fully understand the drug’s capabilities.

With the pressure that animals endure while under experimentation, stressed animals in the laboratory lead to unsuccessful experimentation and results. A normal monkey is placed in an unknown, strange place and suddenly two figures dressed in white lab coats with a catching net in hand tries to mangle it down onto the lab station. In stressful situations, most primates show immediate response to anxiety and distress. At the New England Regional Primate Research Center, a research facility of Harvard Medical School, 90% of the experimental monkeys showed irregular behavior and psychological agony.

The laws that protect animals from these stressful situations only cover 5% of the animals used in experimentation. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) does not provide protection to rats, mice, fish and birds, which makes up 95% of the animals. In the year 2010, the AWA insured 1,134,693 animals; however, that leaves 25 million other animals vulnerable and unprotected.

It can be said that animals testing can save lives and cure many diseases. Chris Abee, Director of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s animal research department asserts that, “we wouldn’t have a vaccine for hepatitis B without chimpanzees” and also states that chimps are our only hope to finding a vaccine and saving 15,000 people every year from Hepatitis C. However, the physical and the psychological health of these chimps are being threatened. 80% of the experiments involving drugs contain LD50, a lethal dose test, being used on animals to discover the limit to how much lethal liquid an animal can stand before dying. Since we were in little children in kindergarten, we have been taught to treat others the way you want to be treated. If this statement has been ingrained in peoples’ minds since the age of four, we can surely understand that no matter the bone structure or the proteins in our body, we are all living creatures. As long we live, everyone should have some sort of protection. If humans have rights against abuse, why can’t we accept that animals should have the same rights as well?

Throughout medical history, scientists have always used animals to test their drugs. Nowadays, light has been shined upon the negative impacts of animal testing cruelty. Our culture has finally picked up the abuse that happens at a laboratory and the stress and anxiety that is hidden behind animals we don’t fully understand. Today, we have other alternatives to drug testing rather than using animals as test subjects. Scientists can use in vitro on human cells to produce a more accurate and refined result, without harming any animals in the process.

Nobody wants to suffer such pain and agony that a testing animals suffers. Restrained onto a lab table, eyes held open with pliers, unknown liquids poured onto burning areas of skin, and almost dying are emotions that no one deserves to feel.

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