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Animal Testing and The Animal Welfare Act

Decent Essays

Many scientists claim that without animal testing, medical breakthroughs and research would not have progressed to where it is today. Some people claim that animals do not have rights and mankind naturally has dominion over them, making it acceptable to use them for scientific experimentation. This is simply not true. Animals can feel pain. They can suffer. One critic of animal testing maintains that pain is an intrinsic evil, and any act that causes pain in any other creature is morally wrong (Andre). A scientist should not be allowed to perform any experiment on an animal that they would not perform on a fellow human being. Animal testing is not only inhumane, it is bad science, and in light of other alternatives, it should have been halted decades ago. Millions of people still labor under the delusion that animal experimentation is the only way to test new medications, cosmetics, and household chemicals for human use. The media, experimenters, universities, and lobbying groups have propagated this misconception, arguing for the role animal testing has played in past medical advances and exaggerating the potential for it to lead to new cures (“Animal Testing”). If people took the time to research the actual tests animals are forced to undergo, they would be appalled by the inhumanity of the whole process. There is only one piece of legislation in the United States that regulates animal testing in laboratories. The Animal Welfare Act, first passed in 1966, has not

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