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Against Animal Testing - Essay

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I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t …. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of my enmity without looking further” – Mark Twain
According to Alex Gordon’s 2005 book, Animal rights: The argument of animal testing, animal testing was first discovered in 1859 by Charles Darwin to help him understand the human body. Since then, animals have been subjected to millions of test each and every year (p. 2). Everything from perfume to hand soap is tested on animals to see if it cause any harmful effects to humans. Animal testing involves inducing chemicals or substances …show more content…

It is dangerous and to put it simply, moronic to apply data from one species to another, but yet billions of dollars of research are spent on animal testing each year. There are countless examples where animals provide different results than humans for a particular experiment. For instance, penicillin has saved millions of lives since its induction in 1928, but it severely harms and will kill cats and guinea pigs. Next, morphine is a sedative for the human body while it is a stimulant for goats, horses, and cats. Also, the drug Strychnine kills humans but not monkeys, and Belladonna is deadly to humans yet harmless to rabbits. Once again, research findings in other species cannot be automatically distributed to humans.
Next, animal testing is cruel and inhumane towards the animals being tested on. According to Overton’s 2006 article, “It’s not just cruel, it’s ineffective,” the Animal Welfare Act requires all laboratories to keep a count on the animals used in testing, but this act does not require scientists to count mice, rats, and birds which are used in about 80% to 95% (p. 5). Because these animals are not covered and remain uncounted, millions of these animals could have suffered without knowing. Thousands of cosmetics and household products are tested on animals each day, most of them causing the animal severe pain. Most of the products do not work on the first trial and cause

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