Animal testing is CRUEL. Every year more than 100 million innocent animals are used for the testing of chemicals, drugs, food, and cosmetics. These animals are locked inside cages all their life, living with excruciating pain, longing for attention, love, and freedom. These animals have become poisoned, blinded, and even killed. Dogs are force-fed pesticides and rabbits have chemicals rubbed into their skin, fur, and eyes. Mice and rats are forced to inhale toxic fumes. Well-known companies like Clorox, Febreze, and Maybelline are still supporting this cruelty toward animals. This is sickening. Lives should not be taken to see if the sparkly pink eye shadow people wear to their prom irritates skin. Human test subjects on death row would be a greater subject matter to test products on. They say the purpose of studying animals is to get a better understanding of how the human body works. USE HUMANS THEN. Animals have benefitted us greatly all our lives. For example, an experiment of removing pancreases from dogs, allowed the discovery of insulin, which has saved diabetics around the world. The past experiments cannot be undone now, and millions of animals still remain dead, but we can stop this from continuing. Though animal testing has led to the discovery of many useful vaccines and medicines in our life, it is no longer necessary.

With advancing technology, alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the use of animals. By studying cell cultures in Petri dishes, scientists were able to create an artificial sheet of human skin. This is more accurate than animal skin, as most of the products they are testing are for humans after all. Animals are incredibly different from us and make poor test subjects. Thomas Hartung, professor of evidence-based toxicology says, “It’s very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we’re trying to achieve in the human.” Drugs that past the animal test are not necessarily safe for humans. For example, a sleeping pill thalidomide, was tested on various pregnant animals to see if birth defects would occur. They did not. Soon after, humans started to use the pill, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities. Animal testing is misleading research and is not accurate. Animal testing is expensive and a waste of money. More reliable methods such as the artificial human skin or members of death row are a much cheaper alternative. Why are we not using this? Save our animals. Stop animal cruelty.