Animal Testing in The United States

Researchers in the United States use around 30 million animals annually in order to develop new medicines, check the safety of medical, cosmetic or any other types of products intended for human use. Thousands of researches have been carried out on animals for over 2500 years and currently, Federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) regulates animal testing in the US. Animal testing has become a heated debate topic over the past 30 years.

The problem many animal rights activists and opponents of animal testing claim that animal testing is cruel and inhumane so it should be banned or strictly controlled to protect animals. One of the major organizations which are against animal testing is Cruelty Free International. They are opposed to animal experiments on moral grounds and also on scientific grounds. However, scientists, researchers and proponents of animal testing can not agree with this idea as they see animal testing as the key to solving many current problems and prove their point by the fact that animal testing has provided human beings with many cures and treatments so far and without them progress would be considered slow. Pro-Test is the main organization that fights against extreme banning of animal testing.

They organize campaigns with the idea that supporting animal testing as crucially necessary to further medical science. While Cruelty-Free Internatioal wants to stop this cruel activity and encourage the use of alternatives immediately, Pro-Test supporters are willing to continue it until they find all necessary alternatives for the sake of progression in science. As a whole these two organizations are on complete opposite sides of the issue, but they do share one aim in common: use of alternative when available and eliminating the animal testing from experiments eventually. This can be achieved by banning some unimportant experimentations on animals and encouraging scientists to focus more on developing alternatives before experimentation.

Although Pro-Test and Cruelty Free International are against each other in terms of Animal experimentation as a whole, they both seem to share a common belief in that alternative method of testing should be used whenever available. CFI activists claim that replacing animals does not mean putting human patients at ris, instead, it will improve the quality and the humaneness of our science. They believe that the development of alternative methods is growing. One of the most important jobs the Cruelty Free International science team does is encourage regulators to accept and promote alternative methods to animal testing.