Say No to Animal Testing

P1. How come when it comes to helping humans, animals are harmed in the process? When medicine is being created, researchers test it on animals in order to see the potential effects it has on us humans. How are researchers able to purposely put innocent animals through pain knowing there is no happy ending for them? Even though this results in someone else’s benefit, it only hurts the other.

P2. The effects of these tests result in many problems for the animals later on. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, have found “monkeys becoming addicted to drugs, cats are deafened and have holes drilled into their skulls, sheep and pigs have their skin burned off, and rats have their spinal cords crushed.” Not one bit of this outcome is ethical and animals should not be looked at as a resource. These researchers do not see the bigger picture when it comes to the animals lives. Animals are not put on this planet for the accessibility of medical research.

P3. When it comes to animal to testing on animals, it will most likely show parallel results to humans but PETA expresses. “there’s no guarantee that drugs are safe just because they’ve been tested on animals.” If there is no definite answer to how the experiments affects humans directly, why do researchers continue to use them?

P4. Lately, there has been growing news of alternative methods to find out the results of medicine in a respectable manner rather than testing these harmful toxins on innocent animals. From using human skin or just newer technology, these new systems have already been found helpful. These methods should be more popular than using animals yet, it is not. The new techniques that do not include animals have been found to be much quicker, easier, and cheaper. PETA talks about how these tests will be done more efficiently which will have humane research that would be conducted using “studies of human populations, volunteers, and patients.”  Animal research being a “well-funded” organization is  major contributing factor to why they are still continuing present day. If other tactics for medical research were available along with funding, those alternative methods would be growing more today.

P5.  The American Physiological Society  says scientists are aware “animals are necessary to medical research when it is impractical or unethical to use humans.” The APS also states animals are “susceptible to many of the same health problems, and they have short life-cycles so they can easily be studied throughout their whole life-span or across several generations.” This does not change the long-time, damaging effects animals are left with. They are aware of the toxic lifestyle they are bringing the animals into, but believe it is easier to work with them than humans because they can “easily control the environment.” It is said, the main reason animals are used intentionally is because it would be wrong to expose humans to a health-risk when they are trying to track the disease in the first place.  Once the animals are tested and are able to show the medicine reacts correctly, it will then be injected into a human volunteer to further-prove the tests. The APS talks about how animal testing’s are performed first in order to “give medical researchers a better idea of what benefits and complications they are likely to see in humans.” Still, the fact that animals may not react the same as humans is a strong indication to stop using animals.

P6. It has been proven animals do not necessarily need to be used in order to see the outcome of a certain medicine. There are ways to avoid using animals as resources, but researchers are still continuing with them. Once animals show the tests are proven to work, they are then brought to human volunteers who are given the drugs as well. Scientists experiment on animals first because they cannot risk giving humans medicine for a disease they have without knowing the consequences. At the same time they are introducing these animals to harmful effects but still decide to use them. Researchers continue to do so because animal testing is funded, while alternative methods are not. If these other methods were being funded, researchers would be able to see the positive effects of using cheaper and easier alternative methods.

Works Cited

“Animals in Medical Experiments.” PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2017.

“If We Don’t Use Animals, Wouldn’t We Have to Test New Drugs on People?” PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2017.

Society, New England Anti-Vivisection. “Animals in Science /….” Animals in Research and Testing. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2017.

“Why Do Scientists Use Animals in Research?” American Physiological Society Why Do Scientists Use Animals in Research? N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Mar. 2017.