Animal Rights

Test Them? Eat Them? Leave Them Alone?

Every year millions of animals are killed needlessly. They are tested in laboratories and butchered in slaughterhouses. These people that do such things are not completely wrong for what they do, but wrong for doing it in such mass numbers and in such horrible situations. Animals should be used for testing and in consumption but only under certain conditions. The testing should be for extreme medical reasons that could save lives and prevent mass diseases, living facilities for the animals should be sanitary and habitable, and the slaughter of animals for food should be limited to only enough for what is needed to survive.

Every year hundreds of thousands of animals are tested on and most die or are killed in these experiments. All of the experiments are said to be done in hope to find new ways to help humans medically and psychologically. This is all well and good but there are so many experiments that are done that need not to be. Testing on animals for such things as the common cold or to see if a new hair gel will cause rashes is not an acceptable reason. Diseases such as AIDS and Cancer should be top priority in animal testing because it in turn can save thousands of lives of humans and animals alike. There are organizations that take their animal rights activism too far in saying things such as even if a cure for AIDS was found we still would not support the testing (Locke Online). An organization called PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, went as far

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as to say that they would rather have their own children in these tests rather than helpless animals (Locke Online). People need to realize that these tests have made such large advances in the medical field that it would be foolish to abolish animal testing completely. In the 1950's hundreds of thousands of primates were killed due to the research in Polio but because of this a vaccine was created and hundreds of thousands of human lives were saved (Blum 625). Polio has been practically wiped off the face of the earth due to the testing of animals. Another advance being researched is lubricant used in premature babies lungs to help them breathe (Blum 627). The lubricant is used on Rhesus monkeys that have been taken out of the womb early then are killed and their lungs are dissected to see how well the lubricant works (Blum 627). This sounds horrible but it in turn will save the lives of so many children born premature. The testing of animals may sound cruel and upset many people but it is a crucial part in understanding our own bodies and ways to help us.

While these animals are kept to be tested on or housed until they are due to be slaughtered they are usually not kept in living areas that would seem suitable. A man by the last name of Pacheco went undercover into a laboratory to see how an experiment, where the nerves of monkeys were severed to see how they would cope with the loss of motor functions and feeling in limbs, was being carried out. He found monkeys that had gnawed off the tips of their fingers due to loss of feeling and the wounds had not been treated, they were oozing with puss and gangrene had set in (Blum 627). On top of such conditions like this many labs have been found to have animals living in small-overpopulated areas that are not cleaned and food is not provided as prevalently as should

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be. The animals are forced to sleep in their own feces and then subjected to stressful testing. Many organizations are fighting to correct these conditions and so far they have succeeded is most cases. Rutgers Law School fights for the idea that animals should be looked upon as persons and have rights such as people do, therefore they should have completely sanitary living conditions and provided with all they should be needed to survive (Rutgers Online). PETA is another group fighting for all rights of animals, and while they believe that no animal should ever be tested on they feel that if they cannot win this battle yet that they should work on such things as the living conditions of the animals kept in labs (Coons Online).

Many of the organizations