Animal Testing

Animals are used for a variety of different tests. Human disease cures are always tried on animals first, most make up must perform experiments with the product on animals first, and dogs and pigs are used to practice surgery on for surgeons. It is not fair and humane to conduct experiments on animals to make sure a product or procedure is safe for us to use or endure. There are no legitimate reasons that an animal's life is worth less than our own. I think that animal's should have similar rights that people have because they too feel pain and experience emotions and just because they look different doesn't mean that they are that much different than us.

I understand that scientists do need to test out products, but wouldn't they get more accurate results of they tested a human product on a human? For example, while trying to find a cure for a stroke scientists have tested many possibilities out on rats. Out of the hundreds of tests only thirty have worked on the rats, and out of those thirty only three have had any success in humans (Freeman, speaker). I think we would find cures and medications much easier if we tested these things out on our own species. By testing on humans we would get more information on how our bodies react to different drugs compared to continuing the testing on different species that don't have the same body and DNA make-up as us. It makes it easiest to test on animals because they can't disagree or volunteer. That would make it difficult to test on humans because many people would not want to experience the kind of pain we put these animals, and rightly so. The tests animals endure are full of constant pain and torture, even if the product being tested is mascara. The benefits that we get from experimenting with animals cannot alone morally justify killing them on our own behalf.

Speciesism is the hurting of others because they are a member of another species; to me this definition is exactly what we are doing to all the lab rats, mice, pigs, etc. Scientists say that it is beneficial to humans to test out all these products and drugs on animals but they always seem to leave out the part about how it would be even more beneficial to test things on ourselves. I think the real reason we sacrifice hundreds of thousands of animals lives to possibly save a few human is because we view ourselves as more superior to rats, mice, dogs, pigs, monkeys, etc. Even though in an Associate Press survey "2/3 of Americans surveyed said an animal's right are just as important as a humans", nobody would die in place of a rodent. Many people think that humans are smarter than all other animals and that's why their lives can be sacrificed, but KoKo the gorilla has an IQ of 80, which is only twenty points lower than the average human (The Rights