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The Cruelty of Animal Experiments
For years, animals have been tested on as a means to find information that could further benefit the human race. These tests have mainly been for medical research, to see if any drugs had any dangerous side effects.
Animals are still tested on for cosmetic make-up and toiletries. Scientists test on these animals because they say they are very much like humans in their response to being tested on for things like drugs and give accurate information of how it will effect human beings.
How can this be true that an animal of a different species can give accurate information about the effect of a chosen drug or product on a human being, only testing on human beings would give you accurate results because you are testing on the same species, different species are always going to have differnt body chemistry and therefore are all going to react to being tested on in different ways.
Animals have been treated very badly for many years and experimented on for ridiculous tests, which should never have been performed, because there was not enough sufficient reason to carry out the test e.g. to test the efficacy of life saving drugs. Anyway animals should NEVER be tested on because they cannot give consent to being tested on whilst humans can. Let humans be allowed to be tested if they give consent or test on dangerous criminals. It is just as unethical to test on animals as it is to test on humans.
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) have helped raise concerns for the testing of animals and have helped to try to abolish animal testing.
Animals that are tested on
Species of animals that are tested on range from insects and frogs to cats and dogs. Rats are the most common animal tested on.
Types of Experimentation on Animals:
Smoking animals
This is one of the most infamous types of experimentation that is carried out on animals. It involves experimenting on animals to find the side effects so that the information can then be passed onto humans. This kind of experimentation was made illegal in Britain in 1997, still many animals are still experimented on and experiments in the U.S. are being funded by tax payer's money even though US federal law does not require that tobacco products be tested on animals.
This experimentation on animals is cruel, wicked and is definately not neccessary since it is common sense that breathing in toxic smoke is going to be bad for you and of course there are going to be a host of side effects which the individual should find out for themselves when they smoke, since it is a voluntary act.
Cosmetics Testing
Cosmetic testing is still one of the most common types of experimentation on animals, since the cosmetic industry is in high demand and a huge amount of money is being made. Cosmetic testing is till conducted in the U.S. where experiments are carried out to find out the general toxicity of the cosmetics and to see if they cause skin and eye irritancy.
Cosmetic testing on animals is banned in the U.K., Netherlands and Belgium and in 2002 the European Union passed a near-total ban of all animal tested products for sale throughout the EU from 2009, also they have banned all cosmetic-related animal testing.
L'oreal, the world's largest cosmetic company, which is situated in France, went to the European court of Justice in Luxembourg and lodged a case there to oppose the ban.
It has taken a frustating 13 years to secure legal legislation on animal testing. Wendy Higgins from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) said that "It has taken animal campaigners and the European parliament a frustrating 13-year struggle to finally secure legislation to outlaw the suffering of lab animals to produce trivial products like lipstick and perfume, it is shameful enough that it has taken this long, impeded as we have been at every stage by aggressive industry lobbying. It is even more shameful that a challenge to actually reverse the EU cosmetics animal testing ban has been brought forward."
The testing of cosmetics and their ingredients on animals has been outlawed in the U.K. since 1998, however the sale of these products tested elsewhere around the world is still a grave cause for concern.
Drug Testing
Testing drugs on animals for the purpose of medical research is the most rational of all experiments done on animals.
Pharmaceutical companies test their drugs on animals to gauge their effectiveness, side effects, toxicology and other tests to see how the drug will then perform on a human.
Animals are infected with viruses and diseases and then administered with drugs to rate how effective the drugs are at treating the virus or disease. Unfortunately it has become the law for companies to test their drugs on animals before ever administering them on a human.
Fortunately there may be chance for experimentation on humans through "micro-dosing" where small amounts of the drug are administered through the skin, also recently, scientists have grown a piece of human liver tissue from stem cells which may give way to initial "human" experiments in the lab.
Drug testing on animals is simply not an efficient way of finding its potential effects on humans as they are completely separate species, what may be toxic to one species may not be to another, so a drug that it tested on animals with small side effects may have big side effects on a human. Chocolate, for example is poisonous to dogs and yet to humans is completely safe.
Animals are merely getting tortured and suffer for nothing. If countries want their drugs to be fully tested then they must introduce human testing and stop animal testing. Remember that testing on an animal is just as unethical as testing on humans, if anything it is worse since they cannot give informed consent.
Ethics
Is it ethical to test on animals? They are a separate species to humans, can we extract enough approxiamate data, more so than testing on humans? There is no evidence that information gained from testing drugs on animals can be used on humans to create a drug that works on humans. If you want to help humans and create drugs that cure illnesses and diseases then why not use human beings themselves? It is highly unethical to test on an animal who has given no consent to the testing and who are clearly distressed by it. Humans do not have the right to do this, also why test on a different species which will never provide accurate information for the use of drugs on a human, it does not make sense. If scientists are willing to experiment on animals then why not experiment on humans who have either given consent or dangerous criminals who have been deemed a permanent threat to society and have therefore been selected as a form of punishment for experimentation.
Testing on animals is scientific fraud! Scientists will never find the cure to cancer whilst experimentating on animals because we do not have the same DNA, they may however find a cure by testing on a human that already has it. It is therefore just a barbaric practice and lots of animals lives are lost for no real reason at all. Humans are completely different in DNA to animals and in my view if we stopped testing on animals and started testing on humans with their consent then we may hit a breakthrough in finding new cures for illnesses and diseases for our own species.
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The Cruelty of Animal Experiments
