preview

Animal Testing Classifies As Legal, Sanctioned Abuse

Good Essays

Animal testing classifies as legal, sanctioned abuse. When an animal is in a lab as a test subject, there is no limit to what harm may be inflicted upon it. Over one hundred million animals go through this torture each year (PETA). These animals spend the majority of their lives in an unnatural, stressful environment, fearing what kind of thing will happen to them next. They are kept behind bars with usually no access to sunshine or fresh air, unable to act as they would if they were free (PETA). Dogs being tested on can not run around in the grass, birds can not fly around outside, and mice have no wheel to exercise on. Animals in labs go through thorough, invasive experiments, often ending in death. Many of these tests they go through …show more content…

A paper by researchers at Yale University titled “Where is the Evidence that Animal Research Benefits Humans?” looks at various studies in which animals were used and shows that there is a small amount of evidence proving that these tests were directly beneficial to humans. In animal testing, human diseases and toxicity symptoms are mimicked in the animal, and the results of the test are often not similar in humans and animals (Stokes).The Food and Drug Administration reported that over ninety percent of products deemed to be safe for animals failed the test when given to humans. Many prescription drugs, such as Oraflex, Suprol, and Selacryn, are intensely tested on animals, and once they are distributed for human use, the results are not the same, causing sickness or death (PETA). For example, in 2004, a drug called Vioxx, intended to help with arthritis, was tested to be safe on animals, yet when brought up for people to use, it caused over sixty thousand deaths in the United States alone. Animals are not humans; therefore, they are not made up in the same way as humans are. Although we share many of the same functions as animals, our genes, cells, and tissues differ (Stokes). If one were to take a human gene and insert it into a rat, the gene would function completely differently in the rat’s body, just as a chemical would function completely differently in a human or rat. A quote from Pandora Pound, a British medical journal states, “The claim that animal

Get Access