Animal Experiments

Many animals are poisoned, scalded, burned and even turned into drug addicts or alcoholics. They are given diseases such as cancer or arthritis and they are crippled, blinded starved and even brain damaged all for us. Some of the experiments done are useless and teach us absolutely nothing.

What goes on?

Animal experimentation is also known as vivisection, which the dictionary defines as ‘Painful treatment of living animals for the purpose of scientific research.’ The government defines an animal experiment as a ‘procedure’ which is ‘likely to cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.’ Sometimes anaesthetic or painkillers are given, but often only for a small part of the experiment because researchers don’t want the results to be affected by painkilling drugs. I don’t think this is acceptable because it puts animals through a large amount of pain sometimes even for no reason.

Most of the experiments done are usually to test an ingredient to find out if it is harmful to humans. They use animals to check to see whether a chemical will irritate skin or eyes. Tests like this cause animals great pain and most of the animals used in these tests are killed because they are no longer needed.

It is fairly common knowledge that rabbits are used to test products for things such as allergic reactions etc. Substances are rubbed into animals shaved skin to test for adverse reactions in the draize test. Soreness, blistering, swelling and tissue damage are common. A solution of the substance may be dripped into the animal’s eyes and any redness, swelling or damage is noted. Rabbits are usually used for this test because their eyes are large and don’t produce enough tears to wash away the solution.

Examples or efficiency testing are:

1. Antiperspirant is tested on mouse footpads because it is the only region where they have sweat glands.

2. The anti plaque effect of toothpaste is tested on mice and rats, which are fed on high sugar diets. They end up with tooth decay.

Substances are given by mouth, by being breathed in or by being put on the skin, depending on the substance being tested. The animals experience pain which ranges from being mildly unpleasant to being extremely distressing.

In the LD50 test (lethal dose 50%) groups of animals are force-fed a substance to find out how much they can eat before dying. Before they die they can suffer from vomiting, paralysis, convulsions and even internal bleeding. Most scientists believe this test is too cruel to be of any use but the test is still being used today.

An animal’s response to pain is measured by putting them on hot plates, dipping their tails in boiling water and by using the ‘mouse test’ in which acid is injected into their stomach.

Forcing animals to swim in a tank of water creates stress and electric shocks, flashing lights, loud noises and chemicals create epileptic fits.

In some poisoning tests animals are forced to breathe dangerous fumes in small chambers. Another type of experiment is warfare research. Animals are maimed, poisoned with chemicals, shot, blown apart and dosed with riot control gas. I don’t think this is fair because animals are not involved in any of our wars and they should not have to be killed just for us to get better weapons. In psychology research animals are deliberately driven mad, they are given electric shocks, brain damaged and stopped from sleeping to see how it affects their behaviour.

Animals are now being turned into ‘biological factories’ to produce medical products to clot blood and even to produce organs for transplants. Scientists have bred pigs with human genes in an attempt to produce animal organs that won’t be rejected so easily after transplant operations in humans.

What are the laws?

In Britain vivisection can only take place if the ‘benefits to humans out weigh the animals suffering.’ in reality this law allows experiments for almost any reason, such as testing washing up liquids, ink and weapons.

Conclusion

I think all the animal experiments featured in this piece of writing cause the animals a lot of unnecessary pain bot mentally and physically.

When companies produce more products most of them are tested on animals. Even though we have to make sure they won’t harm us why do we need so many of the same products on the market which all do the same thing?

I think that psychological experiments are worse than physical ones because the animal rarely dies and has to live with its depression or mental pain for the rest of its life. Even though all animal experiments are bad I think psychological tests are the worse because they are not for a real purpose, these tests don’t help us to find curse for diseases such as cancer.