Anima Testing

Animal Testing- It's just wrong

"There will come a day when such men as myself will view

slaughter of innocent creatures as horrible a crime as the murder

of his fellow man- Our task must be to free ourselves- by widening

our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the

whole nature and its beauty."

-Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

Picture this: You're locked living inside a closet without control over any aspect of your life. You can't choose when you eat or what you eat, how you will spend your time, whether or not you will have husband or wife or children, and if you do, who that person will be. You can't even decide when the lights go on and off. Think about spending your entire life like this, even though you didn't do anything wrong or commit a crime. This is life in a laboratory for animals. It is deprivation, isolation, and misery.

Now think about the needs of the animals that are caged up and stripped away from their natural homes. For example, chimpanzees spend hour's everyday grooming each other feeding their young and providing a comfortable environment for them to live in. They are loving protective parents and when they are taken away from their homes, they leave behind their children and the chimpanzees are no longer in their comfortable nests, but caged up alone and with cold, steel bars around them for the primary purpose of being experimented on (Baird, 1991). Not a nice picture right? But this is just one example of what most of the animal have to go through. I argue that animals have rights and should not be treated unfairly.

Around the world, millions of animals are experimented on, tortured, and killed every year. Many of these animals range from simple household pets, such as cats and

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dogs, to monkeys, and even cows. There are also animals used for entertainment, such as greyhounds (once useless on the track) are donated for animal experimentation (Animal Testing 101. Retrieved on November 1, 2006).

"Ask experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer

is: 'Because animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is

morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because

animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical

contradiction" (Animal Testing 101. Retrieved November 1,

2006).

As many as 115 million animals are experimented on and killed in U.S. laboratories every year (Wise, 2000). Most of the experimentations- including pumping chemicals into rat's stomach's, taking muscle tissue from dog's thighs, and putting baby monkey's into isolation chamber far from their mothers are paid for by you, the American taxpayer and consumer. Yet you could never see these labs and control what's going on with how the government spends your money.

Animal testing is a multi-billion dollar industry which is mostly public funding with help from the U.S. government, university laboratories, cage and food manufacturers, and animal breeders. The industry and the people profit because animals, which cannot defend themselves against abuse, are legally imprisoned and exploited.

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Attempting to distinguish between what is morally right and wrong is difficult, and some would say that human life is far more important than the life of an animal, but animals have as much right to life as human beings (Monamy, 2000). Animals feel

hunger, and pain just as humans do. It is wrong to burn a rabbit's eyeball for mere cosmetic purposes, and it is unfair to put them through excruciating experiments just to know if humans can wear new tanning lotion.

Animal testing has been practiced since the beginning of the 17th century, despite the fact that there had never been a law that required companies to test their personal care and household products on animals before selling them to consumers. Sure, we hear the stories time and time again, lab rats being tested for our safety, and most of us think its okay because animal experimentation will benefit us humans, wrong! To many others, animals are viewed as better test subjects than anything else because scientists can control many aspects in an animal's life such as their diet, the temperature, lighting, and the environment.

Contrary to what many people believe, testing drugs on animals often give defective results and numerous people are often unaware of what goes on behind laboratory doors. Animals are inflicted with diseases and they would not normally get. Tiny mice grow tumors as large as their bodies, kittens are purposely blinded, and rats are made to suffer seizures. Experimenters forcefully feed chemicals animals and then conduct surgeries such as implanting wires in their brain, crush their spines and much more.

Think of what this may feel like and then being dumped back into their cage

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without painkillers. While some facilities are better than others in caring for animals, there are no happy animals inside laboratories.

Most of these animals are only used in one experiment, but sometimes they are

used more than once. It is rare for these animals to live out a full life. Most of them are

euthanized or killed as painlessly as possible,