The New England Anti Vivisection Society

At this moment, millions of animals know cold cages in laboratories as home, but why? Some of these animals are subjects for medical research purposes, while others are used out of pure curiosity and to test different products. Majority of these animals are used in painful experiments and are left in agony. While many of them die, a few animals survive, but these unfortunate ones wish they could be put out of their misery as well. Although scientists have resources they could use to lower the pain each animal endures and even alternatives of their test subjects, millions of innocent creatures are still suffering. The fact that animals are still used when animal experimentation is avoidable and not necessary makes animal testing unethical.

It is an ongoing issue that the animals that are being tested have been known to suffer. Vivisection is one of the worst forms of institutionalized animal abuse in our society, and it is a sanctioned and legal abuse. Within laboratory walls, what can be done to animals has no limit except those imposed by a committee selected by the facility itself. Imagine spending your entire life as a hospital patient or prisoner, and this will only begin to approximate the life of an animal in a laboratory. What happens to you can range from uncomfortable to agonizing to deadly—and you are helpless to defend yourself. Animals in labs live stressful, monotonous, and unnatural lives of daily confinement and deprivation. The only changes in their

Research facilities also have very few restrictions on lab workers. The Animal Welfare Act does not give the facilities any restraints for their employees. “No legal requirements for researchers to consider alternatives to their use, nor provide them with relief from the pain, distress, or even the most basic slanderers of care.”(Neavas1) “Though most are qualified scientists, they do not have to provide a quality of care which is inhumane to the animal.” (Neavas 2) The laboratories that these animals are stuck in may be unsafe and unclean. The animals live in small, dark cages and are forced to live that way their entire lives. Animals should be able to ram free and should not be kept locked away in cages until they are needed. “Under the Animal Welfare Act, research institutions are required to establish an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee “to oversee and evaluate all aspects of the institution’s care and use program.”(Neavs1) “While the United States Department of Agriculture and the Animal Welfare Act and Institutional Animal Care and Use systems purport to ensure” humane “treatment of animals in labs, the system is plagued with loopholes that leave animals

They are enslaved, beaten, and kept in chains to make them perform for humans’ “entertainment”; they are mutilated and confined to tiny cages so that we can kill them and eat them; they are burned, blinded, poisoned, and cut up alive in the name of “science”; they are electrocuted, strangled, and skinned alive so that people can parade around in their coats; and worse.” PETA fights for researching into alternative methods of testing so that animals don’t have to suffer in scientific

Despite the polling of the 94% almost 10 billion farm animals each year are suffering and if the consumers would have seen how they were treated they might have thought twice before they bought it. Another thing to think about is more than 10,000 american horses die for human consumption even though that 80% say it shouldn’t happen. 1

The number of animals tortured and killed annually in United States laboratories varies from seventeen to seventy million. These numbers come from the Animal Welfare Act, which requires the report of animals used in experiments. But, this act does not cover mice, rats, and birds. These are the animals used in 80-90% of all experiments. Because these animals are not covered by the act, they remain unaccounted for. We can only imagine how many animals actually suffer and die each year.

An estimated 30 million animals are used per year in biomedical and research experiments ("Update: Animal Testing" 1). In particular, about 75,000 dogs, including thousands from homeless shelters, are abused every year in laboratories in the United States ("Dogs in Laboratories | PETA.org” 1). “Man’s best friend” is a preferred choice by scientists for use in toxicology experiments. Dogs are tormented as they undergo tests involving overdoses of pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, pesticides, or household products, gradually poisoning them and sometimes resulting in death ("Dogs in Laboratories | PETA.org” 1). In what way does treating animals with such disrespect seem ethical at all? Animals were not put on the earth to be destroyed for research in the name of “science.”

According to Humane Society International, “Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and ‘killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means.’” As you can see theses animals are being treated cruelly and inhumane, just reading that paragraph makes shivers run down my spine. We use animals for testing when according to Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?, “Animal tests are more expensive than alternative methods and are a waste of government research dollars.” Animal tests cost more than alternative methods and as it say in the text a waste of government research dollars. It's crazy to think that this is happening every day since, “Animals can suffer like humans do, so it is speciesism to experiment on them while we refrain from experimenting on humans”(Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?). Even though we don't think of animals as humans because they are not, does not mean that they can not suffer like a human. Another thing that most of the animals being tested on are mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs, When 11 Facts About Animal Testing wrote about these animals and what happens to them they wrote, "Several

(Allusion) These animals are forced to live in their own personal hell (Metaphor) where they are used in different experiments and are often subject to forced feeding and inhalation in addition to being deprived of water and food for prolonged periods of time. They are restrained and burned so that scientists can study the healing process of wounds, while the pain they feel is to study the effects of remedies. Would you want to be restrained while scientists inject you with strange substances, or pour liquids in your eyes and spread creams on you? (Rhetorical Q) According to PETA (Allusion), more than 100 million animals are used every year in unnecessary, cruel and unreliable experiments (Repetition of key point) such as drug, food, chemical and cosmetic tests but exact numbers can not be provided because 95% of all the animals used are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act. This act minimally protects live or dead cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, monkeys or hamsters but does not protect birds, mice, rats and farm animals used for food and other purposes. The act regulates transportation and housing of the animals but it does not regulate the actual experiments, which allows the scientists to do unnecessary tests on the animals without getting in any

Animals endure inhumane suffering from researchers performing animal experimentation on them. Animals are put through excruciating amounts of pain because of testing done for products. According to the website "PETA", " Animals are infected with diseases that they would never normally contract, tiny mice grow tumors as large as their own bodies, kittens are purposely blinded, rats are made to suffer seizures, and primates' skulls are cut open and electrodes are implanted in them". These animals are going through unnecessary painful experiences when they should not be. Typical items that are used in a person's everyday life are first tested on animals. For example, when household items are tested on animals they are very painful to the animals being used in the experiment (Goldberg and Hartung, 86). People do not realize that their use of daily products has been causing helpless animals suffer. Animal testing is the same concept as animal abuse. Animal abuse means animals can be abused mentally and physically. When animals are being used in experiments they are being mentally abused, an example is restriction on food and water and being kept isolated. If animal testing were put to an end, then these innocent animals would not be suffering from this animal inhumanity.

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

Unfortunately, animals being put through testing face conditions that are extremely unhealthy. Animals are kept in unsanitary areas with little to no space at all. According to the organization Humane Society International, “animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation…” (“Animal Testing - ProCon.org”). With no rights at all animals are being forced into harsh medical testings for diseases that can kill or severely injure the animal, such as polio. Through undercover investigation animals located in these labs are living “stressful, monotonous, and unnatural lives of daily confinement and deprivation” (“Animal Testing - ProCon.org”). Not only are these conditions being displayed in large laboratories, but also universities such as University of Oklahoma. During these experiments animals are being“fed chemicals, infected with diseases they would not naturally get, and are treated with no painkillers” (Animal Testing - ProCon.org”). As a result, medical testing facilities should be unable to be this inhumane to animals. Even though these tests may combat a widespread disease, animals should not have to endure this type of treatment at their own will.

Just imagine if it was you who is locked in that cage waiting to be tortured and killed, imagine the agony, the suffer, the pain. Animals feel the same way you would feel or even worst because they are innocent and they cannot speak for themselves. Animals are not things to be used for experiments. Animals should be free in their natural habitat. If it’s inhumane for humans, then why do we allow it on animals? There is no difference between a child and a dog, a man and a rat. We all feel love, we all feel pain and we all deserve freedom. We must do something about it, we must cooperate somehow to end the millions of torturing of animals in laboratories “Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the wellbeing of a person or animal is at stake” (Martin Luther King Jr.) The well being of humans cannot justify the torturing, exploiting of thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or to test products. Animals must be treated with respect, love and compassion and the practices in laboratories do not uphold the right of these animals all for the cost of vanity and the cost of selfish human gain. We must do stand up and speak for them. We are their

In addition to the fact that animal experimentation is ineffective, unreliable, and costly, testing on animals also violates animal rights. Do we think that just because we are superior to animals that we have the right to subject these innocent creatures to cruel and painful experiments? The superiority humans feel over animals may be the reason why humans feel less troubled by inflicting pain on animals. Or perhaps humans justify this cruel act by saying that animals would not be used in experiments if their use was not absolutely necessary. The pain and misery these animals are put through is absolutely unjustified, especially since the experiments they are subject to are proven to be unnecessary and even pointless. As Ingrid Newkirk states, animals in the laboratories are "under constant stress from fear, the loss of control over their lives, and the denial of all

Animal testing is an extremely controversial topic because it deals with delicate matters and matters of humanity. Animal testing is intended to help consumers buy safe and healthy products, but they are torturing innocent animals by doing so. People that are in favor of animal testing usually are also advocates for medical research and progress, though there have been other proven methods of research. But they don’t think of it as tormenting and killing animals. On the other hand, a lot of people are compassionate about animals and think that testing on them is inhumane. These advocates of the animals think that an animal’s safety should be put