Animal testing has been occurring for centuries. It can even be dated back to the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans. Physicians would dissect animals with the pure interest to obtain knowledge. But even then, one such physician stated that he would rather use a pig as his subject because he wanted to, “ avoid seeing the unpleasant expression of an ape” (Monamy 9). The ethics of animal testing has always been questioned. Humans do not want to think of animals as on the same level of us. The similarity is terrifying and makes the cruelness obvious. In the 16 century it has been recorded that early vivisectionists, scientists who perform experiments and operations on live animals, did not consider animals to be of the same lineage of us and barely cared for them. One such scientist, Relado Colombo, was known to perform live lectures on pregnant dogs. Maehle and Trohler said that he would take the young fetuses from the mother and harm them in front of her. Being a mother she would bark furiously and attend her younglings, ignoring her own sufferings (qtd. in Monamy 9). Would a human mother not do the same? Though animals cannot speak and are not thought to be capable of our thinking, they do not deserve to go through horrible experiments just to better our scientific world. Animal testing should be outlawed or modified to where animals do not suffer because experimentation is cruel and unfair and does not have enough beneficial results to deem it necessary.
What is the need for animal testing? Being in the same kingdom (Animalia) and even possibly the same class (mammalia), humans and animals have many characteristics and features in common. About twenty million animals are experiment subjects annually. Most of these animals are used in hope to make human life better and to progress in the world of medicine. The remaining are used as test dummies for products. Hundreds of thousands of animals are experimented on each year in order to figure out the results and dangers of products such as cosmetics, other personal care items, and cleaning supplies (Peta). Experiments and research are also done in order to obtain knowledge and attempt to advance in science. In most science classes today students will dissect animals that were caught or even bred just for the purpose to one day be cut open and discussed. Animals in laboratories are also constantly given drugs and chemicals to test out possible cures or solutions for diseases.
The animals that are generally used in research are mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, primates, dogs, cats, cows, fish, and birds (Peta). How does an animal become a research animal? Many of them are bred either in the laboratory or in special companies. Others, like the primates, are captured from the wild. There is even a market for lab animals. Licensed dealers sell animals to research companies. These animals can come from miserable places such as puppy mills. Some dealers will do pound seizures and even go as far to lure animals in with meat and sedatives. Others will pose as animal control officers and get their animals that way (Peta). Found pet and “will give to good home” flyers are answered by the wrong people. It is a terrible to imagine that some of these suffering animals were once pets, pets that were loved and adored and treated like family. It breaks one’s heart to know that a family member is being treated cruelly and has to suffer for something they do not deserve.
When researching animals many different tests are done in order to predict the effect it will have on humans. One test done is for eye irritancy. A test is performed, often on rabbits, called the Draize eye test. It is a test created by John Draize, a scientist working for the United States Food and Drug Administration. During the test a substance of some sort will be placed in the rabbit’s eye and the rabbit will be observed in intervals. The rabbits may suffer consequences such as bleeding, ulcers, and blindness for up to three weeks. At the end of the tests it is probable that the rabbits will be killed. Another test is done to determine acute toxicity, which is done to calculate the danger when a chemical is exposed to the mouth and skin, or is inhaled. It is generally conducted on rats and mice. In the past the test included poisoning a large amount of animals and waiting until at least half of them died. The tests today are less lethal. They now conduct the tests until the animals show signs of suffering and then the scientist will terminate the experiment. These signs of suffering are severe and include agonizing pain, seizures, and loss of motor function. In the end though the animals are still killed in order for the scientists to observe the animals’ internal damages. A further experiment done is called repeated dose toxicity, which observes chronic damage when exposed to chemicals daily over a period of time. Sometimes this test is done on animals other than rodents to obtain a better comparison. These animals are watched over the test period and then killed to find out the organ and body system damages. Skin tests are also performed on laboratory animals. Experiments are done to test the skin sensitivity and see if an allergic reaction occurs from a product or material. Scientists will generally test a shaven spot and measure the amount of itching or swelling and also see if any irreversible damage was caused. Guinea pigs are often the subjects for these tests. Absorption rate or dermal penetration, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of toxic matters are tests called Pharmacokinetics. Animals will receive these chemicals by force-feeding, inhalation, or injection. Blood samples are taken but in the end the animal is killed and the organs are examined. In laboratories, research animals also experience a mutagen test. Mutagenicity is when a physical or chemical agent that causes a change in the animals actual genetic make-up and leads to frequent mutations. Many of these mutations will cause cancer in the animals. In carcinogenicity, scientists purposely administer a carcinogen, a substance that causes cancer, to the animal. The animal is generally a rodent and is killed in the end for studies. Not only will scientists carry out research on animals but also they will also purposely have them reproduce and they will study the reproductive and development aspects. Pregnant animals and their partners, typically rats and mice, will receive a chemical and they will be murdered before birth and the fetuses will be observed for toxicity reports. The nervous system is also studied in neurotoxicity in animals. Hens and mice are usually the subjects and the must endure doses of chemicals or pesticides over a long period of time and are then killed to examine the nervous system and the effects left. Another research experiment done is ecotoxicity, a test that involves fish or other sea creatures and shows scientists the environmental effects due to certain chemicals. In these tests it is possible that about half of the fish die within the first few days, and longer experiments measure the entire life cycle and can lasts up to two hundred days (Types of Animal Testing). There are numerous amounts of experiments done on animals for research purposes and they all seem to affect the animal negatively.
According to a former employee at Huntingdon Life Sciences, one of the world’s largest research laboratories that have locations in England and New Jersey, stated that only five to twenty-five percent of the tests done agree with humans and are successful (Kinship Circle).
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