irradiated them with different levels of radiation by x-rays. Twenty-one of the dogs died within the first two weeks. The experimenters determined the dose at which fifty percent of the animals will die with ninety-five percent confidence. The irritated dogs vomited, had diarrhea, and lost their appetites. Later, they hemorrhaged from the mouth, nose, and eyes. In their report, the experimenters compared their experiment to others of the same nature that each used around seven hundred dogs. The experimenters said that the injuries produced in their own experiment were Typical of those described for the dog (Singer 30). Similarly, experimenters for the US Food and Drug Administration gave thirty beagles and thirty pigs
large amounts of Methoxychlor (a pesticide) in their food, seven days a week for six months, In order to insure tissue damage. Within eight weeks, eleven dogs exhibited signs of abnormal behaviour including nervousness, salivation, muscle spasms, and convolutions. Dogs in convultions breathed as rapidly as two hundred times a minute before they passed out from lack of oxygen. Upon recovery from an episode of convulsions and collapse, the dogs were uncoordinated, apparently blind, and any stimulus such as dropping a feeding pan,
squirting water, or touching the animals initiated another convulsion.
In this country everyone is supposed to be equal, but apparently some people just don’t have to obey the law. That is, in New York and some other states, licensed laboratories are immune
from ordinary anticruelty laws, and these places are often owned by state universities, city hospitals, or even The United States Public Health Service. It seems suspicious that some government run facilities could be immune from their own laws. In relation, No law requires that cosmetics or household products be tested on animals. Nevertheless, by six o clock this evening, hundreds of animals will have their eyes, skin, or gastrointestinal systems unnecessarily burned or destroyed. Many animals will suffer and die this year to produce new versions of deodorant, hair spray, lipstick, nail polish, and lots of other products. Some of the largest cosmetics companies use animals to test their products. These are just a couple of the horrifying tests they use, namely, the Drazie Test. The Drazie test is performed almost exclusively on albino rabbits. They are preferred because they are docile, cheap, and their eyes do not shed tears (so chemicals placed in them do not wash out). They are also the test subject of choice because their eyes are clear, making it easier to observe destruction of eye tissue; their corneal membranes are extremely susceptible to injury. During each test the
rabbits are immobilized (usually in a “stock”, with only their heads protruding) and a solid or liquid is placed in the lower lid of one eye of each rabbit. These substances can range from mascara to aftershave to oven cleaner. The rabbits eyes remain clipped open. Anesthesia is
almost never administered. After that, the rabbits are examined at intervals of one, twenty-four, forty-eight, seventy-two, and one hundred an sixty-eight hours. Reactions, which may range from severe inflammation, to clouding of the cornea, to ulceration and rupture of
the eyeball, are recorded by technicians. Some studies continue for a period of weeks. No other attempt is made to treat the rabbits or to seek any antidotes. The rabbits who survive the Drazie test may then be used as subjects for skin-inflammation tests. Another widely
used procedure is the LD-50. This is the abbreviation of the Lethal Dose 50 test. LD-50 is the lethal dose of something that will kill fifty percent of all animals in a group of forty to two hundred. Most commonly, animals are force-feed substances (which may be toothpaste,
shaving cream, drain cleaner, pesticides, or anything else they want to test) through a stomach tube and observed for two weeks or until death. Non-oral methods of administering the test include injection, forced inhalation, or application to animal’s skin. Symptoms routinely include tremors, convultions, vomiting, diarrhea, paralysis, or bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth. Animals that survive are destroyed. Additionally, when one laboratory’s research on animals establishes something significant, scores of other labs repeat the experiment, and more thousands of animals are needlessly tortured and killed.
Few labs buy their animal test subjects from legitimate pet stores and the majority use illegal pet dealers. There are many stolen animal dealers that house the animals before, during , and after testing. These farms most frequently hold animals between tests while the animals recuperate, before facing another research ordeal. These so called farms in question are mainly old barn-like buildings used as hospitals and convalescent (recovery) wards are filthy,
overcrowded pens. At one farm in particular dogs with open chest wounds and badly infected incisions, so weak that many could not stand, were the order of the day. These dogs were “recuperating” from open-heart and kidney surgery. Secondly, a litter of two-day-old pups
were found in a basket, with no food provisions in sight. In every pen there were dogs suffering from highly contagious diseases. An animal’s road to a lab is seldom a direct one. Whether he’s stolen picked up as a stray, or purchased, there’s a de tour first to the animal dealer’s farm; There he waits- never under satisfactory conditions- until his ride, and often life, comes to an end at the laboratory. Every day of the year, hundreds of thousands of fully conscious animals are scalded, or beaten, or crushed to death, and more are subjected to exotic surgery and then allowed to die slowly and in agony. There is no reason for this suffering to continue.
In conclusion, animal testing is inhumane and no animal should be forced to endure such torture. Waste in government is one thing; it seems to be an accepted liability of democracy. But the wasting of lives is something else. How did it ever get this way.