Imagine that you are a mouse used for scientific testing. Routinely you are shocked, burned, gassed, poisoned or genetically altered, sometimes with no painkillers, in tests. You live in a small, dark cage, and are deprived of anything relating to your natural habitat. You are constantly stressed, and may develop mental disorders that cause you to mutilate your body. If you ever have children they will be ripped away from you, sometimes immediately, just so they can have the same miserable existence as you. You have no way to stand up for yourself, and are destined to this horrible existence for the rest of your life (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”). This happens to lab animals across the country, and sadly is legal, due to insufficient protection from laws (“Pros and Cons Animal Testing”). Many people who support testing say it is essential to the advancement of science, but is that really true? Animals are not protected enough, testing is not successful, and there are plenty of other options. Animal testing should be avoided.

Animal testing should be avoided, because animals are not given enough legal protections. The only federal law that protects animals used in testing, the Animal Welfare Act, does not provide protection against experiments performed on animals, but only applies to the transportation and housing of the animals (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”). This allows the experimenter to do anything to the animal in experiments, and painkillers are not even required.  In the passing of the law the U.S. Conference Committee stated that they wanted, “‘to provide protection for the researcher... by exempting from regulations all animals during actual research and experimentation... It is not the intention of the committee to interfere in any way with research or experimentation’” (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”). However, that essentially defeats the purpose of the law, which was to  protect animals.  Additionally, the AWA defines an “animal” as, “‘any live or dead dog, cat, monkey (nonhuman primate mammal), guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm blooded animal.’” This means that it specifically excludes birds, cold blooded animals, mice and rats bred for research, and farm animals (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”). According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) report entitled, “Annual Report Animal Usage Fiscal Year: 2010”  the AWA only covered 1,134,693 testing animals compared to the about 25 million actually used in experiments in 2010.  This means 95 percent of all testing animals are not covered by the AWA’s already mediocre protection (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”).  Thirdly, the AWA does not seem to be actively enforced.  It appears that many places are getting away with violating the AWA, one of the most famous cases being at the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana. They committed a minimum of 338 violations of the AWA, and were discovered not by the government, but by a private organization, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) (“Cruelty to Chimps at Research Center”). The HSUS went undercover for nine months there, documenting the horrific life these chimps had.  NIRC is a federally funded facility, yet it took someone not from the government to actively try and discover whether the facility’s practices were legal. The AWA does not provide acceptable protection for covered animals, most animals are not covered by it, and the government does not enforce it.  Clearly, animal testing should be avoided because animals are not protected enough.

Animal testing should be avoided, because it does not work. The FDA has found that 92% of drugs that pass in animal tests do not succeed in human tests (“Animal testing is Bad Science”). If that is the case, imagine how many drugs would have been successful in humans had we not passed them up because they failed in animal tests. In fact, neurologist Aysha Akhtar, M.D., MPH, stated in her book, Animals and Public Health: Why Treating Animals Better is Critical to Human Welfare, “Experiments on animals delayed the acceptance of cyclosporine, and Fk-506 (tacrolimus) was almost shelved because of high toxicity in animal experiments. Both drugs are widely and successfully used to treat autoimmune disorders and prevent organ transplant rejection in people” (155). Also, in HIV-AIDS testing, scientists were able to develop a vaccine that protected chimpanzees, but not humans. An article in the British Medical Journal said, “When it comes to testing HIV vaccines, only humans will do,” (“US Moves to Shield Chimps”).  Finally, many drugs have killed humans because they were showed to be safe in animal studies.  Helen Marston, chief executive officer of Humane Research Australia (HRA) wrote, “Medical advances should be weighed against the delays and tragedies caused by reliance on animal experiments – the thalidomide disaster whereby tens of thousands of children were born with severe deformities not predicted in animal tests…”(“Is Animal Testing Necessary?”). Additionally, Vioxx, an arthritis drug, is estimated to have killed about 27,000 people through heart attacks, but was actually shown to have protective effects on the heart of mice during testing (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”). Many potentially effective drugs may have been shelved because of failed animal tests, chimpanzees proved ineffective for helping develop a human vaccine for HIV-AIDS, and animal testing has lead to many medical tragedies, costing many people their lives.  Evidently, animal testing should be avoided because it does not work.

Animal testing should be avoided because there are plenty of alternatives to it. Epi-derm, an artificial skin, is one alternative to animal testing. In studies comparing the two, Epi-derm correctly identified all skin irritants, while rabbit skin only identified 15 of the 25, leaving 40 percent wrongly identified (“Alternatives in Testing”).  Secondly, the “Lethal Dose 50” (LD50) now has an alternative.  LD50 is when scientists continue to give animals toxic substances to animals until 50 percent of the animals die and the rest are later killed. It is used to measure toxicity of a substance. The alternative, a new toxicity test developed by the late doctor Björn Ekwall, is about 20 percent more effective and clearly less cruel (“Alternatives in Testing”). Lastly, Humane Society International (HSI) compared the costs of animal tests and their alternatives and found that the alternatives were much less expensive. They found that, “An "unscheduled DNA synthesis" animal test costs $32,000, while the in vitro alternative costs $11,000. A "rat phototoxicity test" costs $11,500, whereas the non-animal equivalent costs $1,300” (“Animal Testing Pros and Cons”). Alternatives to animal testing are more effective, not cruel and less expensive. Obviously, animal testing should be avoided.

Many proponents of animal testing say that it has greatly contributed to medical advances in the 20th century. However, this is simply not true. An article published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found no evidence of this (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”). Neither did researchers from Yale and British universities, and they published an article in the British Medical Journal entitled, Where Is the Evidence That Animal Research Benefits Humans?  They deduced that there was little to no evidence supporting this claim (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”).  In fact, medical historians have determined that the 20th century’s large increase in life expectancy is explained by factors like improved nutrition and sanitation, not any “advances” made in animal testing (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”). Many people also believe that animal testing is important because it tests on a whole living system. They believe that alternatives don’t take into account the functioning of a whole living body. Nevertheless, taking an animal from another species, having it artificially contract a disease it wouldn’t naturally come into contact with, in a stressful environment is not going to give accurate results, and certainly isn’t taking into account the functioning of a whole living system (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”).  It is apparent that animal testing has not contributed to medical advances and is not superior to alternatives.

In conclusion, animal testing needs to stop being used as a testing method.  Animals are insufficiently protected, testing methods are not effective, and there are many superior options. Also, there is no credible evidence proving that animal testing has greatly contributed to medical advances.  Yet, the products you use everyday, such as makeup, hair products and most medicines have been tested on animals in some way. However, does it have to be like that? Now some products are created without using animal testing, which is a step in the right direction.  If those companies can do it, why can’t others?  The excuse of  “it’s not possible without animal testing” is going down the drain since many products currently don’t test on animals.  They are safe and cruelty free. We don’t have to use animals for our own interests anymore.  After all, Alice Walker once said, “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons.  They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men (Phillips).”

Works Cited
Akhtar, Aysha. Animals and Public Health: Why Treating Animals Better Is Critical to Human Welfare. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
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