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Animal Testing And Alternatives

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Animal Testing

Procon.org stated that an estimated twenty-six million animals per year are used for scientific and commercial tests in the United States of America. Animal testing would not be so widely used if people took into account the alternatives to animal testing, the accuracy and efficiency of animal testing and its alternatives, and the cost difference between animal testing and alternatives to it. Animal testing has been used since five hundred B.C. (procon.org). Out of all of those reasons the most important one would be the alternatives to animal testing which would be able to eliminate the use of animal test subjects altogether.

ALTERNATIVES According to The Humane Society of the United States most animals that are used in …show more content…

According to the New England Anti-vivisection Society non-animal tests are more accurate, and faster than animal tests. Also, alternative scientific tests are more reliable than animal tests (Alternatives). For example, animal tests on rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, monkeys, and baboons showed no link between glass fibers and cancer but when human tests were performed a link was found between the two (Alternatives). Additionally, when tests on skin irritants were performed on rabbits the test results identified ten out of the twenty-five irritants correctly with a forty percent error (Alternatives). When this same test was performed on the artificial skin product, Epiderm, all of the irritants were identified correctly with no error (Alternatives). Another example of this is the fact that toxicity testing with human tissue is more accurate (Alternatives). Compared to the Lethal Dose 50 test (LD50), donated human tissue used in toxicity testing had 85% accuracy, while LD50 had 60-65% accuracy (Alternatives). Another alternative test called the DakDak is used to measure the effectiveness of sunscreen (Alternatives). In contrast to animal testing, when the DakDak was performed it got through five to six products in the time it takes animal testing to do one and at half the cost of …show more content…

According to Humane Society International a non-genotoxic cancer risk test performed on a rat costs seven hundred thousand dollars, while a SHE test costs only twenty-two thousand dollars. Some tests can take months or years to perform and study and they cost thousands of dollars (Costs). On the other hand computer modeling techniques are much faster and also are much cheaper when compared to animal tests (Costs). Also in vitro tests cost much less than animal tests (Costs). For example in an Androgen Hormone inter test performed on a rat it would cost thirty-seven thousand dollars when an in vitro test would only cost seven thousand three hundred dollars to perform (Costs). In addition to that, when a Estrogen Hormone inter is performed on and OVX it costs twenty-nine thousand six hundred dollars, but when performed in in vitro it only costs seven thousand two hundred dollars (Costs). As well as when a pyrogenicity test is performed on a rabbit it costs four hundred and seventy-five to nine hundred and ninety dollars, but when it is performed on a LAL then it costs eighty-five to one hundred and sixty dollars (Costs). In this exact same test there is also a cheaper alternative option called Endosafe or IPT which only costs eighty-three to one hundred dollars to perform (Costs). Also, a test called the embryotoxicity test costs fifty thousand dollars to perform

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