Humans, we are just one species of animals, one very small species living in a gigantic world with hundreds of thousands of other animals living with us. They may look different, act different and even be under developed compared to us, but these animals are still similar to us in many ways. They have families and sometimes infants that they need to look out for, yet we still believe that we somehow have the right to torture these poor defenceless animals for product testing, medical research and surgical skills training. This is already bad enough, yet we keep this up intentionally while knowing that using animals doesn’t even give us adequate results for medical research. We even know other ways that don’t involve animals that are as good as or even better than the use of animals.

It has already been well established that animals used for product testing and medical research inevitably undergo severe pain. Investigative journalist Natalie O'Brien stated, “There were more than 25,000 animals subject to an experiment with ‘death as an endpoint’, in which the animal is suffering and the death of the animal is planned.” This was all just in 2015. Natalie also went on to say that “the animals remain conscious for some or all of the procedure”. This is during experiments such as a marmoset intentionally being given a drug over dose and then having their eyes removed.

This is simply horrific, it is inhumane and no life on this earth should have to come across this sort of treatment. This could very well be us if we couldn’t defend ourselves, would we still call this okay?

We continue to use animals even though research has told us that using animals doesn’t even produce reliable results. The results are so bad that 9 out of 10 drugs deemed successful through animal tests, fail in human clinical trials. It has even been stated by Dr. Denise Russell, a researcher at the University of Wollongong specialising in animals and ethics, “The fact that there is poor transferability from animal to human studies suggests using animals to find out about humans is misguided.”

This is truly dangerous. If product testing, medical research or even surgical skills training fails, it could have harmful effects on consumers, including you.

This needs to change, and to do this we need to quit using animals and start using different and more reliable methods. Some argue that the use of animals is a must as it is our only option, however this excuse can be put to rest as only idiots would believe that this is true.

It is widely known that there are other methods that can give us even more reliable results without the cruelty towards animals. Scientists have cloned the human genome which is the genetic material of an organism which can give us results that are more specific to humans.

So if we have a choice to avoid torture and murder of other animals, why don’t we all take it? If you had the choice to torture and kill a monkey to test your new product or simply let it live and test it out in a non-harmful way, what would you choose?

Not to mention, these methods are even easier for scientists to conduct as stated by Paola Antonelli, a design curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, “This is the epitome of design innovation. Removing some of the pitfalls of human and animal testing means, theoretically, that drug trials could be conducted faster and their viable results disseminated more quickly.”

Using animals for product testing, medical research and surgical skills training is simply stupid. We do not have the right to let an innocent animal suffer and die for our own personal gain.

But is it really personal gain?

We are torturing animals that aren’t giving us dependable results to keep us safe. We are doing all this while knowing that there are other methods out there that don’t even involve cruelty to animals and can give us results that we can depend on for our health.

This is a huge price to pay just to use animals, and are we really all that stupid to want to throw our money at an idea that is only making things worse for us all?