Reasons to Stop Animal Testing

Good morning. I am here today to convince you all to oppose, stop, and disengage from the cruel and unnecessary animal testing.

Did you know that the lipstick, the eye shadow and the mascara we use to make ourselves look more attractive have poisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent animals?

Did you know that the hairspray, the hair gel and the perfume we use to make ourselves look smarter have blinded hundreds of thousands of innocent animals? Did you know that even the toothpaste, the shampoo and the soap we use every day have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent animals?

Why We Must Stop Animal Testing

If your answer is ’No’, now is the time for all of us to know it. Animal testing is not only a research to find cures for human diseases, it is also an experimentation to establish safety of various products such as daily necessities, cosmetic products and medicines. To produce a safe product for us, numerous animals have died in laboratories. To ensure our health, numerous animals have been tortured in laboratories. To let us stay away from diseases, numerous animals have been killed.

Animals and humans might share much of their DNA, but we are all built differently and we all function differently. There are many problems with the animal to human researching that occurs and makes animal testing ineffective have gone through the unbearable aches and pains in laboratories.

Animals do not get many of the human diseases that people do, such as major types of heart disease, many types of cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, or schizophrenia. Instead, signs of these diseases are artificially induced in animals in laboratories in an attempt to mimic the human disease. It is not surprising to find that treatments showing ‘promise’ in animals rarely work in humans. Not only are time, money and animals’ lives being wasted (with a huge amount of suffering), but effective treatments are being mistakenly discarded and harmful treatments are getting through. The support for animal testing is based largely on anecdote and is not backed up, we believe, by the scientific evidence that is out there.

90% of drugs fail in human trials despite promising results in animal tests – whether on safety grounds or because they do not work. Cancer drugs have the lowest success rate (only 5% are approved after entering clinical trials) followed by psychiatry drugs (6% success rate), heart drugs (7% success rate) and neurology drugs (8% success rate). Vioxx, a drug used to treat arthritis, was found to be safe when tested in monkeys (and five other animal species) but has been estimated to have caused around 320,000 heart attacks and strokes and 140,000 deaths worldwide.

The federal government and many health charities waste precious dollars from taxpayers and well-meaning donors on animal experiments at universities and private laboratories, instead of supporting promising clinical, epidemiological, and other non-animal studies that could actually benefit humans. As hard as it is to believe, animal experiments for cosmetics and household products continue even though non-animal tests are widely available. Instead of measuring how long it takes a chemical to burn the cornea of a rabbit’s eye, manufacturers can now drop that chemical onto cornea-like 3D tissue structures produced from human cells. Likewise, human skin cultures can be grown and purchased for skin irritation testing.

We have no the right to use animals as the subject for any researches or experimentations just as we do not have the right to experiment on humans without their consent. We should respect the right of all species just as we respect the right of all people. We should pitch in with the work against animal testing and stand up for animal rights, for the animals tortured and yelled behind laboratory doors just as we stand up for our own right.

In conclusion, animal testing is not reliable and is very expensive. Animal testing is inhumane and now that there are alternatives to this, there is no excuse for anyone to still commit this act. I suggest that governments fully ban animal testing, so that the world becomes a better and safer place for both animals and humans. I believe that with the changes in technology these days, we are able to find more ways and methods that scientists and researchers can do without involving any cruelties and causing any harm to any creatures.

Works Cited

1. Animal Justice. (n.d.). Animal Testing.
2. Cruelty Free International. (n.d.). Animal testing. https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/what-animal-testing
3. European Commission. (n.d.). Alternatives to animal testing.
4. Ferdowsian, H. R., & Beck, N. (2011). Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing and Research. PLoS ONE, 6(9).
5. PETA. (n.d.). The Issues: Animals Used for Experimentation. https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/
6. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. (n.d.). Animal Testing and Medicine. https://www.pcrm.org/research/animaltestalt/animaltestingandmedicine
7. Ranganathan, J., & Ranganathan, D. (2014). Animal testing and its alternatives - the most promising and reliable methods. Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods, 24(1), 1–6.
8. Saunders, N., & Roughley, M. (2017). The ethics of animal research. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 189(5), E187–E188.
9. Singer, P. (2015). Ethics and animal experimentation: What is debated? Journal of Medical Ethics, 41(1), 1–3.
10. The Humane Society of the United States. (n.d.). Animal Testing 101.