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Using Animals in Research is Bad! Essay

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Have you ever wondered about what a product or a medicine goes through before it gets to us on the store shelves? Products from deodorant to Viagra to weed killer go through years of tests before a regulating body decides they are safe for us to use. The FDA approves drugs and cosmetics and he EPA regulates chemicals that are used and may be harmful to the environment. However before these products are even considered by these regulatory bodies they must go through years of testing. Testing that is unfortunately done on defenseless animals. Each year 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals, such as mice, rats, rabbits, cats and dogs are used in experiments to test products such as medicines, lipstick, household cleaners and pesticides. …show more content…

This type of test is disturbing due to the fact that there are several highly sensitive non-animal tests that can be done to detect chemical-induced genetic mutations but the government still requires companies to poison animals to see whether or not they will develop cancer. The standard test of the kind is the “rodent cancer bioassay.” Mice and rats are subjected to a lifetime of chemical exposure to the chemicals in all new or reformulated pesticides, food additives, and drugs. Studies have proven that these tests are found to have more than a 70 percent false-positive rate. The final group of tests that are performed on animals is product tests. No law requires that cosmetics and household products be tested on animals however, the FDA does urge companies to conduct whatever tests are necessary to establish that their products are safe and the Consumer Safety Product Commission that regulates household products does not require animal testing yet many companies do it anyway. I have saved what I feel is the most cruel aspect of animals testing is that done on primates. Primates are known to be sensitive, intelligent beings that share many important biological and physiological characteristics with humans. Baby primates that are born in labs are forcibly torn from their screaming mothers usually within three days of birth and the

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