Essay, Research Paper: Animal Testing/Rights

Do we own animals...or do we simply care for them as pets and use them in our experiments and research?
What distinguishes a pet from a lab/test animal..What characteristics make them any different from each other? Do the tests we do actually have significance and how far can we take them?

These are the debated questions many researchers stray from answering..These tests are supposedly for the better of humanity..but what do the animals get from them?
What is it that gives us the right to pluck a species from its natural environment to cram it into a cage, breed it as often as we see fit, stick needles in its eyes and burn its skin?

Often it is said that because animals can't feel as much pain, this is an acceptable practice...They say that if they felt it, they would scream or fight back. Truth being is that many of them do scream and even cry (cows and chickens will cry tears similar to humans)...Fighting back isn't an option with as many restraints as they have preventing it.

Others say this is justified because it is the only way for medical and scientific research to make any type of advances...Truth being, according to many scientific American researchers, trends in animal research, over half these 'necessary' tests are actually for unnecessary reasons.
Many of the tests performed are without any type of pain killers, even after the tests are performed. This is done so the results are in the purest form...
Many opinions on animal rights are formed by being educated on the subject. This could be why many scientists are changing their ways and substituting test tubes for test rats and have even admitted some of their faults in procedure.

Many researchers have been brainwashed and trained into thinking animals aren't anything but "stimulus-response bundles".This is how they can do these procedures without having any regret about the agony they induce almost mechanically.
Many choose not to think of these beings as anything but data.

If you own a pet, how would you feel if you knew this was happening to it? I don't know how compassionate one must be to not want their pets skin burned off or needles poked through their pets eyes for an eyeshadow experiment.

Usually, pets are completely thought of as being totally different from a test animal..But why? What is it that makes them so different? nothing. I took a survey of 100 people, I asked each of them the same questions:
Do you own a pet?
and Do you believe that animal experimentation is just?
I asked these because I wanted to find out if people who knew what animals were like ''up close and personal'' and people that didn't know what animals were like ''up close and personal'' thought of animal testing..and how did owning a pet affect the way people thought of testing...the results were as follows:
Of 100 people, 50 of whom do own a pet and 50 who dont..
39 of the 50 people that own pets disagree with testing *in most cases. Of the 50 people that don't own pets, 8 of them disagreed with testing *in most cases.
I think this test clearly shows that when people get to know an animals behavior and know what it is like, opinions change on the harm they want to come to animals in general.

Most of these test animals were born and will die in extreme pain in laboratories for the ''good of humans''. 2 billion mammals alone die each year in these tests. Of the percentages, 89% of the tests are on rodents, 2% are on dogs and cats, 3% are on primates, and the remaining 6% are on pigs and animal fetuses.

Should animal testing be allowed on certain animals but not on others? I don't think so. What is it that makes one animal higher than the other? Is it intelligence? Take a human VS. Cow. Naturally most people would rather see a cow get hurt than a human, but why? Just because a human can say ''that hurts'' gives us higher status? The cow will feel it just as much even if it cant say so.

Many doctors for Responsible Medicine believe that animal based experiments are unscientific because of barriers in species differences. Laboratory animals (models for man), do not reflect the slightest resemblance to human physiology, psychology, lifestyle or diseases. These differences lead medicine and science astray. This can result in harmful side-effects from drugs, misdiagnoses from current diseases, as well as the potential for new diseases. This adds to the suffering of both humans and animals. This also adds to the fact that we cannot just simply transfer the result of an animal study to a human. Many pointless deaths have been caused by this that could've been prevented.
If your asking why these tests continue if they are so unscientific, there are explanations.
Animal studies have proven to be more convenient than human volunteers. This is because animals are considered a ''disposable species that can be manipulated where needed''..Whereas human studies must be careful not to harm the patients they are testing.
One example would be the Polio vaccine. This is one of the most widely known successful animal-based experiments. Many see this as a credit to animal based experiments, but one of the creators of the polio vaccine has admitted that the work on animals was only after the success of the vaccine on human cells. He also stated that just because the vaccine worked on a primate, doesn't mean it was the reason it worked on a human..and therefore, just because animals have experiments performed on them, and vaccines that are successfully tested on them, doesn't mean that that's the reason the vaccine works, nor does it mean it will definitely work on humans.
The most common diseases that are using animal-based testing are : AIDS/HIV ,Most types of cancers, Diabetes, heart disease and leukemia.
The following is a list of tests commonly performed on the 'subjects':

Toxicity (Poisoning) Test:
The test substance is added to food or water, or is just force-fed through a long syringe directly to its stomach.
After they have been dosed, the animals are observed for any symptoms of poisoning, such as tremors, bleeding, vomiting or loss of balance. This test may last for many days and any animals that do not die at the end of the experiment are killed and autopsied.
In poisoning tests, animals are often given much larger doses of a substance than humans would ever use.


Skin Irritancy Test:
This test involves scratching or scratching a patch of an animals skin before applying the test substance. They are held in a restraining device to stop them from licking or rubbing the test area...once again they are observed for signs of irritation such as reddening, swelling, cracking, bleeding or ulceration of the skin. The test lasts for several days and no pain relief can be given.


Eye Irritancy Test:
This is called the Draize test. A substance is dripped into the eyes of a rabbit to see if it causes any irritation or damage. During the test, which lasts for several days, the animals are held in stocks to stop them from wiping or rubbing their eyes. Once again, they are given no pain relief. Rabbits are chosen because they have large eyes and they have poor tear ducts which means they can't wash away the test substance. This test procedure, like all the others, causes a lot of suffering to the animals.
As humans we think of ourselves as superior to everything else living, therefore giving us the right to deny anything lower than us the chance to live. It is our obligation, however, to abolish this cruel trend and protect those that our lower than us, not kill them.
Animal Rights isn't about loving animals more than people, or putting their needs before ours, but protecting animals from cruelty and unfair treatment, just as we'd expect to be protected.


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