Less then one per cent were dogs, cats, horses and monkeys. This does not sound like much but in fact it was 5,933 dogs and 3,191 monkeys,
“Every second of everyday of every year an animal dies in an experiment in the United States.”
Thousands of animals are being killed and animal researchers understand people are concerned and say the conditions are being improved enormously. There are in fact very tight laws to control the use of animals.
Most of the major advances in the last century would have been impossible without animal research. Anaesthetics, insulin, polio vaccines, penicillin and antibiotics were all discovered through animal research. Think of what we do if we didn’t have Anaesthetics, some operations would be impossible. Antibiotics are also very important, they are prescribed to patients everyday to fight infections.
“All animal species are however unique, including humans and it is unreliable and can be misleading or harmful when data collected from vivisection is applied to humans.”
This was proven in the 1960’s. Numerous animal experiments were carried out where animals had to inhale tobacco smoke. It showed that it did not cause lung cancer. Tobacco companies used these studies to delay Government and doctors’ warnings of the harmful effects.
Over the past century many thousands of animals have been cruelly experimented on. This is why the majority of people against vivisection protest. At the University of Pennsylvania a test was carried out to study the result of head trauma,
“Animals were strapped to machinery to receive high-impact blows to the head, that left them with severe brain damage,”
This is only one example of a horrible experiment. There are countless other experiments, such as
“Animals being burnt alive, starved and even monkeys’ eyelids being sewed shut.”
While millions of children are left starving in the world today and many Americans cannot even afford medical treatment, an obscene amount of money goes towards vivisection each year.
“The Untied States vivisection industries spend over $18 billion on animal experiments each year.”
As I mentioned earlier some people think that because animals are unique and sometimes slightly different, results from vivisection are unreliable. Others however, think that alternative methods could be used for example, “Using computers to predict how humans would react to certain drugs.” are a waste of time and animal research should be used instead. They agree that further in the future computers may become more hi-tech and much more reliable. At the moment computers are nowhere near the standard to predict such experiments.
After going through the pros and cons of vivisection, I feel that the cons slightly outweigh the pros. I think that vivisection should be made illegal where animals are put through pain. Anaesthetics could be used to reduce the pain. I do not think it’s fair that animals should suffer just for humans. There have been discoveries without using vivisection such as,
“The isolation and transmission of the HIV virus, the mechanism of HIV transmission and the discovery of the relationship between cholesterol and heart diseases.” (The number one death in America.) I also believe that because there have been incorrect results in the past from vivisection, it is too risky to be carried on in the future.