ANIMAL TESTING
Each year in the United States, an estimated seventy million animals are hurt and killed in the name of science by private institutions, household products and cosmetics companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and scientific centers. Animal testing is wrong and downright mean. Innocent animals should not be treated badly and caused pain for the sake of a human's safety. Many people think animal testing is good while others think it is wrong. I think it is completely and absolutely wrong. Some people argue that humans are not necessarily superior to animals, so why should animals be experimented on and made to suffer to protect human beings? Do you know what animal testing is, what condition the animals live in, and what some alternatives to testing animals are?
Animal testing is the use of animals in biological, medical, and psychological studies. Human beings and many animals have similar organ systems and body processes. Experiments on animals help scientists increase knowledge about the way the human body works. In the United States, scientists perform experiments on more than twenty million animals each year. That is way too many. Medical researchers study animals to get a better understanding of body processes in humans and animals. They use many animals to study the causes and effects of illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. Vivisection is the most controversial issue of animal rights. Vivisection actually means “cutting a living thing”. Some popular companies that still test on animals are Band-Aid, Clorox, Febreze, Maybelline, and many more.
Right now, millions of mice, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside cold cages in labs across the country. They suffer in pain, ache with loneliness and long to be free. All they can do is sit in their cages and wait, in fear, for the next experiment to begin. The stress actually causes the animals to begin strange behavior like pulling out their hair and biting at their own skin. They jump in fear whenever someone walks past, scared that they will be chosen. After going through this terrible life, almost all of these animals are killed.
I feel animals are tested for meaningless numbers on a chart and then killed. There are many cheap, faster, and non-animal tests that can replace the ones that are out there now. The first realistic software models of human and animal organs are starting to emerge — potentially replacing some of the fifty to one hundred million animals used each year for scientific research. Human skin model tests are now being used, including the EpiDerm test, which has been accepted as a total replacement for skin corrosion studies in rabbits. Products could also be tested on cultured human cells grown in laboratories. This would be more reliable because they are actual human cells.
There are so many reasons to stop animal testing. All of these things are done to animals in laboratories but if they were done outside of these places, they would be considered crimes. The animals suffer everyday with no protection from cruelty. For one thing, it's wasteful because so many scientists have come up with humane and modern technology that is faster and cheaper than testing animals. Animal testing needs to be stopped immediately.