The Ethical Issues on The Practice of Animal Testing to Test Cosmetics and Drugs

Over 28,000 animals a day are killed because of animal testing, that’s over one hundred and four million every year all around the world. Why is it that its animals are tested on not anything or anyone else and what effects do these tests have? There are so many alternate ways to test cosmetics and drugs, so why don’t we use them?

Animal testing is a cruel way of trying to find results that aren’t always trustworthy. Animal testing has been a controversial topic for a while now, but the fact of the matter is that is produces the most accurate results. There are three reasons why animals may be used in scientific experimentation. The first is to ensure the safety of new drugs and pharmaceutical products. The second is to see whether such products might be effective in humans. The third is for general research into the biology of an animal, or the function and action of certain diseases within its body.

The effects the tests have on the animals are very extreme. With some tests, animals can start growing massive tumors or even have new limbs growing anywhere on their bodies, so they have to be killed because there is no treatment. Every 8 seconds an animal dies due to this. Many chemicals and medicines result in general pain for the animal test subject. The pain is often unquantifiable because animals cannot express their discomfort, but this pain is often exhibited by animals who refuse to eat or remain still instead of engaging in normal activity. Many test subjects die as a result of the testing they undergo. Often test animals are not given medical treatment to counteract the effects of the testing they are subject to, resulting in the eventual loss of bodily function and early death. No experiment is illegal no matter how cruel or irrelevant to human health and I think that is just not good enough.

There are many alternate ways to test cosmetics and drugs. Whether the testing is drug tests, cosmetics, or toxicology tests, they are all unnecessary and cruel to the animal. I think a new way of testing should be considered, maybe using humans who volunteer their bodies for experiments, mainly people who are very sick and volunteer their bodies so they can help and find a cure for future people who get that disease or sickness. Humans will also be a more reliable source to test on because are very different from humans, so if a certain drug works on a mouse that doesn’t necessarily mean it will work on a human because their bodies react differently to certain diseases and medications. 92% of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. If we test on a human and that drug works then we can be much more certain that it will work on other humans as well. Studies have shown that micro-dosing (where only a tiny amount of a product is given to a human through the skin) could be a new and very effective alternative to animal experiments. The recent news that scientists have a small piece of human liver tissue from stem cells could also mean that one day it may be possible to perform initial ‘human’ safety trials in a lab.

In conclusion, I think that animal testing is a bad way to test things because the effects it has on the animal causes them to be in horrible discomfort and the testing of products can and should be done in different ways.

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