Animal Testing = Human Torture | Teen Ink

Animal Testing = Human Torture

June 9, 2010
By ChristopherRobbin BRONZE, Tucson, Arizona
ChristopherRobbin BRONZE, Tucson, Arizona
4 articles 1 photo 0 comments

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Unless life also gives you water and sugar, your lemonade is gonna suck.


Mice are not little men, so we can't accurately assume that their reactions will be the same as human reactions to the same product. Animal testing is not only a waste of time and money, but also unnecessary and inhumane. Lab animals, and every other animal in general, are capable of having personalities and feeling human emotions. Animal testing should be illegal on cosmetics, medications, and other household chemicals.

Though scientific results provide evidence to support their accuracy, animal reactions towards foreign chemicals and different than those of humans. Scientists have successfully cured cancer in lab mcie, while keeping it from reaccuring. However, these resutls are not accurate because the cancer cells were artificially injected into the mice, cells that would never grow in an animal as such. Tiny mice grow tumors as large as their bodies, which is unnatural. Something artificial, even lab-made, does not have the same outcome as the real thing would. Artificial fruit juice isn't the same quality as the 100% organic fruit juice you drink while consuming the actual fruit itself. Animals have rights too, but they can easily be bent and twirled around just because they have no voice; they can easily be tortured and still be classified as legal.

Imagine if we could explain to the test subjects what the scientists were doing to them. If they were able to fully understand, what would we say? Would we mention that there are alternatives such as cloned skin cells which provide more accurate results? Some of the most common tests would be beyond torture if performed on humans. These cruel tests are given fancy, scientific names to make them seem okay to the public: Phototoxicity and Photosensitisation, Mutagency, Carcinogenicity, Teratogenicity, and many more. These acts of cruelty are being funded by you, the American tax-payers. You provide funding for the suffering of mice, rabbits, chimpanzees, dogs, kittens, guinea pigs, and many others. It wasn't okay when scientists experimented on african-americans, Jews, orphans, or gypsies, so why now? We're supposed to speak for those whom can't speak for themselves.

"Ask experomenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because they are like us.' Ask experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animalexperimentation rests on logical contradiction" -Professor Charles R. Magel. Like humans, Chimpanzeas are social and loving animals. They never leave their families, they spend hours everyday grooming eachother, and make soft beds for their children to sleep on; they protect their young. And just like humans, when they're seperated from their families by force, they sink into depression and slowly lose their minds. All animals living in these conditions live in deprivation, isolation, and misery. They live in fear. Animals are capable of love, just like us. They're capable of feeling lust, joy, and producing tears, just like us. Animals are intelligent, and they know that there's a happier world beyond the walls of the lab.

Testing on animals is safer than creating potentially toxic products and risking the health of human beings. Bousch and Lamb test their optical products on rabbits. Better their sight than ours, right? At the most, one dog or cat is being used for reasearch while at the same time, fifty are put to death in animal shelters. Also, the approximate number of animals used for scientific research is 17-22 million; compared to the 5 billion killed and consumed every year. However, testing on animals is not the solution for safe consumer products. As mentioned earlier, there are alternatives out there that don't require animal nor human suffering.

Animals are living beings and it shouuld be made illegal to test on them. It is important that this issue be illegalized because billions of dollars are being wasted on unnecessary research and trillions of animals have either died, are in the process of dying a painful death, or laying in a steel cage hurting, starving, terrified; wondering if there is any good left in the world. American taxts must stop funding experimentation. If not, our country will make a mockery out of animals.



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on Jun. 27 2010 at 3:58 am
Treefiddy BRONZE, Tarzana, California
1 article 0 photos 158 comments

I'm not going to argue a moral imperative for or against animal testing, but do you honestly believe that animals and humans have the same moral worth? A few years back, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), a radical animal rights activist group launched a controversial campaign to discourage consumption of animals. They showed pictures of chickens in cages next to pictures of Jews in the death camps, making a direct comparison between the two. You have also made the comparison that because humans have experimented on humans, it is no different that we experiment on animals.

Animals do not have a moral compass. They do not have the ability to reason or the ability to express complex emotions. I find it detestable that anybody would senselessly harm an animal, but I realize that a chicken does not have the same value of life as a human.

I love my dog, but if I had to choose between the life of my dog and the life of a fellow human I will never see, nor will I ever be affected by it, I would choose a human life.