Stop Animal Testing
3 min read
By: Jasmine Wolfe
“Each year, more than 100 million animals are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, chemical, drugs, and cosmetic testing. When the animals become too weak for testing, before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed,”(Animal) Animal testing should not be allowed because it’s causing both physical pain and psychological distress in poor innocent animals.
Animals should not be tested on because it causes physical pain; however, animal testing contributes to life-saving cures and treatments. Mrs. Stolarski, Biomedical teacher, was asked, “Do you think animal testing is necessary if so why and if not why?” Her response was, “If animal testing were not used, people would have to be the primary test subjects for new medications and treatments. Safety would not be able to be determined prior to testing on people.” Mrs. Takacs, English teacher, was asked the same question and her response was, “I feel that with all of the innovations and technology of today, there should be other ways to test products than to use animals. I do not want to see anything harmed to create a product and would like to have companies find new and better ways for testing.”
The California Biomedical Research Association states “that nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using animals” (Annual). 100 years is a long time, imagine how many animals had to died and get tortured to get one experiment to work. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane to many animal lovers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in “January 2020 that research facilities used over 300,000 animals in activities involving pain in just one year,”(CBRA) that includes force feeding, food and water deprivation, infliction of burns and other wounds. If 300,000 animals are being tested on in one year that means that in the past 100 years 30,000,000 animals were being used for testing.
Poor innocent animals didn’t ask to be tested on leaving them in psychological distress; however, in some cases there seems to be no other choice. “Animals must be used in cases when ethical considerations prevent the use of human subjects, when testing medicines for potential toxicity, the lives of human volunteers should not be put in danger un necessary” (Coronavirus). Scientists can test vaccines on human volunteers. Unlike animals used for research, humans can give consent to be used in testing and are viable options when the need arises.
Many agree that animals should not be tested on and get treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything natural and they’re confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. To help stop animal testing one can start using brands that are cruelty free. Brands that are cruelty free will have a logo of a leaping bunny, the bunny will have a blue line over and under the leaping bunny, with a star at the end of both blue lines.
