To Save Innocent Lives, We Must End Animal Testing

Have you ever wondered who is the testing subject of your beauty products, vaccines, and medication before they make it to you? Well, the answer to that question: animals are the test subjects for all of the different products that assist you in life. Animals have been used for centuries now by famous scientists such as Galileo, Aristotle, and Galen to understand the human body better. People have mixed feelings when it comes to animals; some may look upon animals as companions, while others may see animals as only taking up space on Earth. No matter the ways that different people perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies in the United States and all around the world. The ultimate question is: Should we conduct testing on innocent lives for the benefit of ourselves?

Studies show that in the U.S. alone, about 17-22 million animals are held captive each year in testing, experimentation, research, and education. In addition to that, more than 100 million animals pass away after being exposed to ill-treatment, murderous fumes, and deprived of essential resources that they need to survive. Imagine a doctor forcing a syringe down your throat to inject a chemical into your stomach, or being restrained and forced to breathe murderous vapors for hours. That’s the cruel reality of animal testing for millions of animals worldwide. But the only thing that gives humans more rights in this field is that animals are used for testing various things without their consent, while humans can give consent and agree to participate in research or case studies. We must decide if animal testing is fair and humane to the innocent lives that are put at risk in the experiments.

Also, we have to note that the anatomic, metabolic, and cellular differences between animals and people are completely different, which makes animals poor models for human beings. But animals are in many respects psychologically similar to humans, most notably in the shared characteristics of pain, fear, and suffering. We certainly can not make sure that the experiment/treatment will work on the human body. For example, the 1950s sleeping pill thalidomide, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities, was tested on animals before its commercial release. Testing on animals with this same drug did not affect the animals like it did humans. Animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx showed that it had no effect on the hearts of mice, but the drug still caused an increase in heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths in humans before being pulled from the market. This proves that some chemicals that are ineffective towards animals prove to be highly effective when used by humans. 94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials. According to neurologist Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH, over 100 stroke drugs that were effective when tested on animals have failed in humans, and over 85 HIV vaccines failed in humans after working well in non-human primates. There is also a side where a drug is murderous to animals but helps the human body. An example of that would be Aspirink, which is dangerous for some animal species. Intravenous vitamin C also has shown to be effective in treating sepsis in humans but makes no difference to mice. Fk-506 (tacrolimus), used to lower the risk of organ transplant rejection, was “almost shelved” because of animal test results, according to neurologist Aysha Akhtar, despite the fact that it was effective in humans.

The government has tried to gain more rights for those poor animals but have miserably failed to do so. One thing they passed was The Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which does not apply to rats, mice, fish, and birds; however, it accounts for some of the animals used in research. This should be modified so that all animals are under the protection of federal law. The types of animals covered by the AWA account for fewer than one million animals used in research facilities each year, which leaves around 25 million other animals without protection from mistreatment. Along with the European Union and countries in Asia which have banned animal testing, the United States should consider banning all sorts of animal testing. Animal testing also has detrimental effects on the environment around us. According to the National Institutes of Health, also known as NIH, waste from their animal testing facilities totaled 1.5 million pounds from 2011 to 2013. In another case, a major pharmaceutical lab was responsible for producing almost 15 tons of animal waste in just one year. This toxic animal waste is released into the world and contributes heavily to pollution. We also have to realize that nature has its own master plan and built everything upon that, we can not alter the food chain in any sort of way. The food chain is important to the entire world, and without animals, humans would cease to exist. Once we take away an important producer, consumer, or decomposer, the chain will fall apart and the environment will go downhill. We cannot use too many animals to perform animal testing, as the population change will result in a food chain disturbance. However, the government can only prevent so much, therefore the younger generation has to take a stand to help gradually obtain rights for the animals living on our planet.

The field of biomedical science has begun to grow, and more scientists are using those scientific means for research to reduce the massive animal testing facilitations. The lack of technology has not allowed for the field to bloom, but existing technology can already be used to substitute the testing of animals. For example, Alzheimer’s disease, a disease known for destroying brain cells in older people, can be cured through various different approaches. In fact, 99.6% percent of Alzheimer’s disease drugs pass in animal experiments but fail in human trials. The ways that we can undergo research on this life-threatening disease without animals is by growing the Alzheimer’s cells in a dish using 3D gel and modeling how the disease progresses by testing new therapies. An alternative would be to use neuroimaging to study the human brain before and after an intervention, and we can also use previous data to see how the disease passed down generation after generation to find new cures. As you can see, there are many alternatives to animal testing, and they are all in our hands. Even as we are maturing, we can help these precious animals by saying no to classroom dissections, protest the manufacturing of animal-tested cosmetics, and leave our body for science. We can become organ donors and give our bodies up for future scientists striving to study the human body and its ailments rather than use animals in the process.

In conclusion, the unreliability of animal experimental results in human biology and diseases is massive. These experiments and research demonstrate that animal experimentation has significant costs and harms to human beings associated with it, so it is very detrimental to animals as well as humans. Evidence from research demonstrates that important physiological and genetic differences between humans and other animals are inadequate bases that can not be used to predict or generalize the use of animals to study how certain products will do their job when used by humans. We should ask ourselves if it is ethically acceptable to deprive humans of resources, opportunity, and hope. And if not, why would it be ethical to perform on animals? We should stand up for animals and encourage technology that will help eliminate the need for the loss of life through animal testing.