Animal Rights

        I am against animal testing for the main reason that the animals go through a lot of pain and suffering for the very small chance that they may help someone someday. 2.57 million animals in the U.K had experiments carried out on them in the year 2001 that were likely to cause pain or distress. This is a lot of animals and it is estimated that 200 million animals worldwide are experimented on annually. If the results that come from the animal testing were reliable then testing on animals would maybe be O.K, but the results are not. All animals are different from humans and so the outcome of the experiments can be misleading; like making a medicine safe for humans when it is not.

         There are some laws in most of the developed countries for animals in laboratories but most of the time they are ignored. The laws are also not strong enough because they still allow the scientist to perform experiments that cause pain and suffering to the animal.

I thing that alternatives to animal testing should be more widely used. It provides information that the scientists need without using animals. There are many different alternatives. They would be used more often if money was put into the projects instead of animal research experiments. Cell culture provides helpful information on the effects of chemicals or medicine on cells that have been grown for that particular job. Computer models can be used to predict the likely effect of a drug using complex programs that are very detailed. Human studies have to be done whether it is animal testing or not. The people are volunteers and they can accurately tell the scientist or researcher how they feel during the experiments.

Though the alternatives save many animals lives, they cannot give us all the kind of information that we need. We cannot test a very strong drug on a human incase it kills him or her. I believe animals are needed in some parts of experimentation but wherever possible non-animal methods of research should be used. I think that tougher laws should be enforced in laboratories and that cosmetic testing should stop since it is not necessary.