About 5 years ago my cousin died. The way that she died is unlike many other ways. She was a “tester”. Instead of using animals, they use people. She died doing something that could have don by an animal.

I know that when most people think about animal testing, they that it is horrible and I used to think that too. But when I started looking up the facts, it turns out that a lot of animals don’t die and/ or are only temporarily injured.

The definition of animal experimentation is the use of animals for psychological studies. Some facts about animal testing might surprise you. Like, the use of anything that is not n animal and not a human for testing would not reliably work. Scientists have tried every other method that they could think of. Here is another fact, without animal testing, simple medicines like Motrin and Tylenol would not be FDA approved. The FDA refuses to approve any drug that is not animal tested. Something else that you would never guess would be that before doctors are allowed to perform surgical procedures, they have to test them on animals. I can see why someone would say that is wrong but doctors cannot just go cutting people open without knowing the possible consequences.

Animal testing has had some breakthroughs. One amazing breakthrough was when scientists cured a baboon that had AIDS. Which led to baboons being immune to AIDS. Then scientists put that healthy bone marrow in an AIDS patient which helped the patient live a more normal life. Scientists have found more benefits from animal testing that the number of animals that have died. There are even more breakthroughs though. For example, scientists cured a dog with osteoporosis. That made that dog’s life a lot less painful. And sometimes, scientists don’t test the animals, they just cure them. And even if the animals ARE tested, they cure them. For instance, after they put cancer in a mouse, they cured it.

So before people say animal testing is bad, they should Think It Over.