Summary:
This essay is about the key reasons why animal experimentation should be abolished. Testing on animals is a waste of money and is sanctioned torture of animals, according to the author.
Cruelty is a sensitive subject to most of us, especially when it involves helpless animals. In today's society, our advanced technology has enabled a myriad of alternatives to replace experimentation. With these alternatives, the pain that the thousands of animals experience each year could be eliminated or at least greatly depleted. The government must make animal experimentation illegal since massive amounts of money are wasted and innocent animals are not killed.
There are three main categories involved with experimentation, all of which are types of testing on animals. The first and perhaps the major category is chemical testing. Different amounts of chemicals are tested on hundreds of animals everyday. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pronounced that almost every chemical must be tested before being imported into the United States. This being the case, between five thousand and eighty-seven thousand animals are subjected to the testing of chemicals. A scientist from the University of Manchester approximated that for every one thousand chemicals that are tested, between six hundred thousand and one point two million animals will be killed as a result. Chemical testing on animals is poisoning them. Their bloodstream is tainted with massive doses of various chemicals in order to see what the results will be. Most of the time, these doses of chemicals overwhelm the animal, causing it to die a painful and stressful death (http://www.peta.org ). The second section is medical testing, which is known to have been the most justified type of testing. Scientists test new drugs on animals in order to determine the level of toxicity before released into human hands. Various medical procedures are also tested on animals to see whether or not the procedure will be successful. Although medical testing is said to be done to ensure the safety of drugs for humans, innocent animals are subjects to these drugs. With medical testing, some of the time the Draize Eye Irritancy Test and The Dermal Irritancy Tests are given. The Draize test involves putting a significant amount of a substance into the animals eye to test the level of irritation it causes. The Dermal test involves repeatedly applying the substance to an animal's are skin to see it's effects, which depending on the substance, may be indelible ( http://www.newscientis.nsplus.). Medical testing is cruelty to animals, forcing them to suffer horrible side effects and pain just so a new drug can be released. The medical field exists to cure and to help others, therefore causing innocent animals such pain that is contradicting its purpose. The last and most minor category is cosmetic testing. In cosmetic testing, animals are tested so that scientists are able to inform companies of the risks involved in using certain products. Cosmetic testing does not cure diseases nor does it play any significant role in curing or saving a human life. Therefore, the testing of cosmetic products on animals is as unnecessary as a adding water to a cup that is already full. Since these types of testings affect the animals in such a negative way, the government must put animal experimentation to a stop.
Is an animal is being experimented on, then it has a large chance of experiencing pain and possibly even death as a result. The PETA(People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) organization states that experiments kill over two thousand animals each time an experiment is conducted ( www.stopanimaltests.com ). For instance, it recently became a theory that marijuana is able to help people who have glaucoma. Scientists performed an experiment to determine whether or not this theory was true. A chimpanzee was chosen as the subject for the experiment. Marijuana was placed into a needle and then the two doses were then injected from the needle into the chimpanzee's eyeball. As a result, the chimpanzee screeched from the pain. Imagine the feeling that this animal felt during the experiment. Imagine suffering the extreme pain that this helpless animal did. Furthermore, over thirty thousand chemicals are tested on animals in a single laboratory. Consequently, these numbers become increasingly higher each day because of the extensive experiments that are added. It is not fair that innocent animals are tortured are the satisfaction of pleasing a shaving cream company. Due to the harmful effects experimentation has on animals, the government must rethink their decision to continue keeping animal experimentation legal.
Since the government has decided that experiments on animals are role in experimentation is greatly significant, however, it is also a waste of time and money. The truth is that the government provides funding for the numerous experiments that are conducted on thousands of animals each day. In fact, the government wastes fourteen billion dollars a year for biomedical research. In addition to this large sum of money spent, it costs another five hundred million dollars for the product to even become fully approved ( http://www.washingtonmonthly.com ). If it costs this much money to provide research and approve one drug, imagine the surfeit amount of money it costs for one thousand drugs to be tested and approved. It is too much money to even say. While the government pays for this experimentation, it is essentially paying for millions of animals to die. Instead of their money being funded toward animal torture, the money could be better spent by putting it toward a charity or a cure for AIDS. Jill Fritz, President of the San Diego Animal Advocates agrees that the government's money could be used more wisely. " The billions of dollars spent on the torture of animals would be better spent n preventive medicine and education " ( http://www.10news.com ). Constantly it is heard that a school system has to get rid of certain things such as sports, due to the lack of funding that they have. The money spent on animal experimentation could be given to those schools and be used for a better cause. Seeing how the government wastes so much money funding for unnecessary testing, animal testing must be abolished.
Experimentation is the cause for the death of thousands of innocent animals. However, the proponent side argues that without animal testing, the medical field would not be as knowledgeable about treatments such as chemotherapy, which saves about seventy percent of children with lymphocytic leukemia. Also, that sixty million Americans would risk death from stroke, kidney failure, and heart attack due to the lack of medication to regulate high blood pressures ( http://www.uky.edu ). The opposing side's point is certainly understandable. However, experimentation is said to be done in order to save human lives by using new drugs and medical procedures. There are alternatives to animal experimentation, the technology today allows scientists to be able to rid of experimentation and find a new way of testing. Innocent animals should not have to be harmed or killed. If the technology to go into space exists, then an alternative to this torture exists as well.
The torture of animals during experimentation must be stopped and made illegal by the government because it is not a necessary action. Torture or torment is the application of severe pain (Webster's 21st Century Dictionary,279). Innocent animals are subject to this physical and mental pain during experimentation. For example, the most common test used today involves animals that are force-fed increasing doses of chemicals until they die(www.stopanimaltests.com). Forcing an animal to inhale poison into its system is cruelty as well as torture. Torture is not allowing animals to live freely among other species, but it is causing these animals unnecessary pain and anguish. Experimentation on animals is extremely similar to inhumane acts such as homicide. Since so many animals suffer as a result of these tests, experiments on animals must be abolished.
Countless lives of innocent animals are being taken due to animal experimentation. Scientists are allowed to test chemicals and medical procedures without limits on animals with permission from the government. Experiments, like acts of cruelty, both involve the torture of animals. In experiments, around 100,000 - 125,000 animals are used each hour for testing, which seems implausible, but it's true. These animals are injected with chemicals and suffer severe pain. This is similar to animal cruelty because animals are abused and also face physical and mental pain. Animals used in laboratories may suffer pain for hours or even days. This resembles the pain an abused animal might feel when struck by an object or person. The number of animals that are used in experimentation and the amount of animals that are abused both continue to increase. The reasons behind experimentation are simple, to approve new drugs and medical procedures.
In contrast to animal cruelty, experimentation on animals serves the purpose to determine the results that certain drugs may have on humans. Unlike animal cruelty, which serves the purpose to punish animals. Although the results may both be that the animal is harmed, animal testing at least has a way of knowing how the product reacts. While animal cruelty can be done in minutes, animal experimentation needs a longer duration and that animal may suffer for a longer period of time. Overall, the cruelty to animals as well as the testing on animals has different results and reasons.
Recently, while browsing a website in my computer programming class, I came across an article on CNN. This article was written by a woman who formally worked in a laboratory performing experimentations on animals. The woman decided that she could no longer remain employed at the laboratory when she was told to inject five doses of chemical into a dog until it died. She was told that the purpose of this experiment was to determine the amount of toxins that a person could handle while using medication. When I read this information, it angered me that people can actually do this to a live animal. Then, I read that this woman performed the experiment because at the time, this was her only way of making enough money to survive on. Soon after this experiment, she quit and never returned to another lab again. She says that sometimes she thinks back to that day and wonders how many other animals have died in the terrible way that the dog did that day early in the morning. Later on in her life, she began fighting against animal experimentation and providing her experience as justified support to her reasoning. (http://www.cnn.com). Now that I have read this article, I realize that innocent animals are dying for unnecessary reasons. Therefore, I feel that animal experimentation must be abolished before more of this torture continues.
Animals that are subjects in experimentation have multiple chemicals and products tested on them. After one product has been tested and results are received, the scientists perform another experiment on the same animal. As a result of these multiple experiments on a single animal, these animals are driven to a weakened state and die a painful death usually during testing. The graph shows that amount of chemicals that are tested on a single animal before that animal dies. The average experiments performed on a single animal ranges from five to seven. Also, these experiments could consist of anything from poison to cutting the animals open. The graph clearly displays the torture that a single animal experiences in it's lifetime as a subject in a laboratory.
In conclusion, there are alternatives to animal experimentation that should be considered as a replacement. Innocent creatures are killed as a result of these unnecessary experiments and therefore, animal testing should be abolished. The government funds for these experiments, spending outrageous amounts of money, while this money could be better funded for more important matters such as education. Animals are living creatures as well as humans and should not be tortured. A needle to the eye, think about how that would feel.
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