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Katie Pederson

Sharyn Hunter

ENG 1201

20 February 2022

Animal Cruelty
Each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats,

rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for

biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food,

and cosmetics testing (Peta). Innocent animals are used to develop medical and cosmetic

treatments with little to no protection. These practices have been performed since 500 BC and

animals are still constantly being robbed of their lives. Testing on animals is not worth the pain

and suffering the animals go through. Animal testing will continue to be a problem in society if

there are not actions taken against it. Testing on animals shouldn't be allowed because it is

inhumane, wasteful, and ineffective.

Animal testing has been used a lot throughout the course of biomedical research. Early

scientists used this technique in order to perfect their understanding of their research. Animal

testing is a way for companies to test their products or medical research on animals before testing

on humans. Animals' lives continue to be wasted so scientists can get answers. Animal protection

rights and groups have taken action against animal cruelty and animals being used for useless

testing. Laws are in order to make animal testing safer for animals but it is still not enough.

These laws include: The ethical cosmetics Bill, The ICCVAM Authorization Act, and The End

Cruel Cosmetics bill. Beauty products are not worth testing on animals. It is important to

educate yourself on the products you are using to insure a safer environment for animals. Brands
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like Nars, Mac, and Benefit all test on animals. Imagine your pet being tortured so you can have

your favorite blush. Companies should already know which chemicals are harmful to humans

and to not use those chemicals in their makeup. There is no need to use animals to test eye

shadow, mascara or eyeliner. Some makeup companies will rub their makeup directly into the

animal’s eye to see what the reaction is. Animal cruelty and harsh treatment towards animals

should always be a concern and protecting these animals should be a priority.

Many solutions are explained to put a stop to animal testing but none have been

implimented. Scientists can take human skin cells and tissues (known as vitro methods),

advanced computer models, and human volunteers (Peta). It is mentioned that a way to help put a

stop to animal testing is to support animal rights organizations by donating. Another way to

support animal rights is to be aware of how the products you buy are made. Before adding

something to your cart check to make sure it is cruelty free. The leaping bunny app or looking

for the leaping bunny logo is a great way to know which brands are cruelty free. Cruelty free

does not necessarily mean that at one point an ingredient used in the product was not tested on

animals but it is a start. With all these solutions mentioned why haven't their been changes made

to stop animal testing?

Testing on animals is an inhumane way for humans to try out new research and gain

information. Imagine living in your closet, being forced to endure chemical treatments. Never

knowing when you get to eat or when this torture will end. There are so many animals who do

live like this. They have done nothing wrong, yet they must live as prisoners who are tortured on

a daily basis. There are no laws preventing animals from being used for research completely.

There is no protection for these animals and no painkillers are used to ease their pain. Animals

are injected with unfamiliar chemicals that their bodies cannot handle because their bodies aren't
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made for it and can't deal with the trauma. Animals are blinded, cut open, and starved. There is

nothing that can justify these actions. Can you imagine your pet going through this when it is

proved only 5% reliable? Animals have similar emotions to humans and should be treated the

same. Just because they are an animal does not mean their life has less meaning than a human

life. The reliability of these tests is very low and the effect that the testing has on the animal can

be 100% life altering. The animals could lose their life or have permanent damage, like losing

their eyesight.

There are many other solutions to perform a test run for an experiment rather than using

animals. Scientists can experiment with human tissue cells, use advanced computer models, or

do studies on human volunteers. Animals are obviously unaware and not benefited from these

procedures. Animals have no control over what happens to them. It is unfair to the animal to be

forced to do something it's uncomfortable with. Testing on animals does not benefit human

health or give reliable answers so why continue to harm animals when there are so many more

options? It is completely unnecessary, cruel, and inhumane.

Animal testing is simply wasteful due to the cost, unreliability, and time. Many resources

are wasted on animal testing when they could be used to improve technology that can make

models instead of harming animals to make them. Our taxes pay to kill and harm animals using

inhumane tactics to conduct research. A portion of our taxes go to support animal testing. $15

Billion is wasted on animal testing every year. This proves that animal testing is so costly that

we must pay taxes to perform these experiments. They are still collecting money to this day for

animal testing even though it is not working. Scientists can provide no excuse for why they keep

doing this to animals. Not only are scientists performing useless tests on animals, but we are

paying for it, and it doesn’t even work. Not only is money being wasted but animals' precious
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lives as well. Caring for the animals proves to be expensive. Animals need to be fed regularly,

have an environment to live in, and the experiments cost a lot. Not only is this terrible for

animals but it is time and is costly when it could be spent on using humans for beneficial

research.

Time is something that is wasted often when it comes to animal testing. In many cases it

takes a long time for animals to arrive at the lab. Medical discoveries are also delayed.

Experiments have to be done again and again to get it right. Researchers waste a lot of time,

money, and effort to create animal models of human diseases. This time could be spent doing

research on humans instead of animals. Researchers spend so much time waiting for the species

to react to a drug or waiting around for any side effects to appear. To support, “About 47% of

preclinical research uses animals, of which 51% to 89% is flawed. Thus, us$14 billion to us$25

billion (9 million to 15 million out of 17 million laboratory animals) of US animal research is

wasted” (Freedman, Cockburn and Simcoe, 2015; Moses et al., 2015; National Anti-Vivisection

Society, 2018). These statistics show exactly how much money is wasted. You can't ignore the

facts. Researchers continue to justify what they are doing to animals even with all the evidence

supporting how much time, money, and effort is wasted.

Animal testing is ineffective because of the unfamiliar environment to the animal,

differences between animal and human diseases, and the disparities between human and animal

genetics. When an animal is put into an unfamiliar environment it can influence the species'

behavior and research outcomes. Animals are taken out of their natural environment and are put

into artificial environments. Such as cages filled with restricted space, no windows, and hot

lighting. This causes an animal to go into distress or perform abnormal behaviors. For example,

when a monkey is being refrained from its natural environment and another monkey is watching
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it, the monkeys cortisone levels rise which causes stress on the species. The same goes for any

other animal watching their own being harmed for “medical purposes”. Even just being held in a

cage changed the results of the experiment. These psychological effects on an animal can

drastically change the test results. When humans are not under the same stress that animals are

under it causes experiments on them to be useless and possibly harmful.

Diseases in humans cannot be replicated in humans which proves as another issue for

being unreliable. Normally human diseases are artificially injected into animals. The problem

with this is the lack of complexity that human disease has which limits its usefulness. Scientists

can try all they want to recreate a human disease into an animal model but ultimately the chances

of it grasping full involvement are slim. To prove, “Animal cancer models in which tumors are

artificially induced have been the basic translational model used to study key physiological and

biochemical properties in cancer onset and propagation and to evaluate novel treatments.

Nevertheless, significant limitations exist in the models’ ability to faithfully mirror the complex

process of human carcinogenesis” (NCBI 13). This shows that efforts to make these experiments

as similar as possible to humans are ineffective. Something could be successful when performed

on an animal but when it is transferred to humans it fails. Too often it is ignored that animal

models will never show the same results as a human model.

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Figure 1 A Study by the KMR group shows the statistics that 94% of drugs will fail during trials

in humans. 9/10 drugs that are experimental fail in animal trials. The red percentages show

which drugs will not pass in human trials. So in Phase 1 44% will not be used then 22% will not

be used ect. This means at the end of the phases only 27% of drugs will be useful on humans.

Differences in physiology and genetics are another reason why animal testing is useless.

Even if a species model and its corresponding human disease were the exact same, an animal's

genetics would throw off an experiment. Not only do results vary from mouse to rat but they

vary from mouse to mouse. Even if you get mice from the same supplier they will react

differently to a drug. There is no proof of animal testing being effective towards humans. There

is no way of knowing how a species will respond to a drug. So, the question is how do scientists

know which animal responds the most, like how a human would respond?
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Many people argue that animal testing is a way for scientists and doctors to test medical

treatments on animals before they conduct them on humans. They also argue that they are

performing life saving procedures or getting life changing research. This is simply not true. Of

course from the outside that is what it seems. What people do not know is that testing on animals

is not very reliable. For example, “Despite the National Institute of Health (NIH) spending $12

billion every year on tests, the NIH admits that 95 percent of animal tests fail to translate to

humans” (Healy 2). This shows that many people have failed to acknowledge that animal testing

is only 5% dependable. What may work on a mouse or bunny does not have a good chance of

working on a human. This evidence is reasoning enough that people should stop validating

testing on animals.

There have been laws passed to protect against testing on animals so there is progress

being made and hope for the future. There are so many other options available to researchers.

These include: microchips in humans, using human tissue, and 3-D printers that produce life size

organs. The coronavirus has also shown hope for the future. Animal testing has been avoided

with coming up with a vaccine for covid. Scientists have skipped this routine and used other

methods and it worked out just fine. This just shows that there is a better alternative than testing

on animals. Of course this is only a vaccine so there is no telling what animals will go through

when scientists continue to test big procedures or find answers for uncured diseases.. While the

end goal is to stop inhumane, wasteful, and ineffective tests on animals there is still a long way

to go. Even if the test does succeed the animal is still hurting and going through pain. Animals

have the same emotions that humans have. We should always treat animals with the same value

as humans. Animals are extremely violated when going through these experiments and are given

no choice. Animal testing is and will always be inhumane, wasteful, and ineffective.
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Works Cited

“Animal Testing: Animals Used in Experiments.” PETA, 9 Feb. 2022,

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/.

“In Vitro Methods and More Animal Testing Alternatives.” PETA, 9 Feb. 2022,
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https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-animal-

testing/#:~:text=These%20alternatives%20to%20animal%20testing,and%20studies

%20with%20human%20volunteers.

“Timeline: Cosmetics Testing on Animals.” The Humane Society of the United States,

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-testing-animals.

n.d.). Test Subjects. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from

https://testsubjectsfilm.com/#:~:text=Test%20Subjects%2C%20BAFTA%2Dwinning

%20director,PETA%20served%20as%20executive%20producer.

Animal Testing Facts and Statistics. PETA. (2021, November 18). Retrieved February 7, 2022,

from https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-

experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

Cruelty-free makeup: These brands don't test on animals. PETA. (2021, November 10).

Retrieved

February 7, 2022, from https://www.peta.org/living/personal-care-fashion/these-

companies-dont-test-on-animals/

Keep animal testing out of your shopping cart. The Humane Society of the United States. (n.d.).

Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/keep-

animal-testing-out-your-shopping-cart

Unilever PLC. (2021, September 22). Alternatives to animal testing. Unilever. Retrieved

February

7, 2022, from

https://www.unilever.com/planet-and-society/responsible-business/alternatives-to-

animal-testing/
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Work Performance of the Ethics Committee for the Welfare of Animals Used in Animal Testing

of

the University of Novi Sad from 2016 to 2018. (2021, June). Retrieved February 6, 2022,

from https://doaj.org/article/e41aea78064b4ff7808075b3bd4541eb.