A mouse cowers in the corner of its tiny cage, desperately trying to escape the searching hands. The mouse is very thin, its tiny ribs prominent, and its fur an unhealthy white. At this very moment, millions of animals like this mouse tremble in cages, waiting for the next test, where they can become seriously ill and even die. Animal testing has gone on for hundreds of years, and it should be ended. Animal testing should be illegal because of the negative impact it has on animals, its ineffectiveness, and the alternative testing methods that are available.
The impact animal testing has on animals is shocking. Animals used in laboratories have pain, stress, death, cancer, and other fatal diseases pushed on them every day. "Mice and rats are forced to inhale toxic fumes, dogs are force-fed pesticides, and rabbits have corrosive chemicals rubbed into their skin and eyes," says PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Animals Used for Experimentation). "U.S. law allows animals to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged." Unfortunately, it seems that our government is doing nothing to protect animals. "The Animal Welfare Act was signed into law in 1966. It is the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers," says the USDA, United States department of Agriculture (Government and Professional Resources). Over 10 million animals die every year from chemical, drug, food, and cosmetic tests (change.org). Animals don’t deserve to be tested on.
Animal testing is also not reliable. What may affect certain animals may not affect humans and vice versa, because the body of a human works differently than that of an animal. "The FDA (The US Food and Drug Administration) reported that 92 out of every 100 drugs that successfully pass animal trials and go into human clinical testing proceed to fail during the human clinic trial phase," says PETA (U.S, Food and Drug Administration). "A product that made a test animal go blind could still be sold to you," states GAN, Global Action Network (What's Wrong with Testing on Animals?). Also, the result of a test depends on the researcher or scientist conducting the experiment. It also depends on the different variables affecting the experiment. "Dr. Malcolm Macleod said that most research using animals to test the effectiveness of drugs suffers from poor-quality controls which lead to subjective assessments and result in an inherent bias that makes the drug seem more powerful than it really is," writes Steve Connor, a science editor, in his article "‘Shocking Increase’ in Animal Experiments" (Connor).
Most importantly, there are alternatives to animal testing. One of the alternatives is called cell culture. Cell culture consists of using samples of human cells for testing instead of animals. They can be grown in "artificial environments." Although this method doesn’t allow scientists to see how the product will affect a living human being with any health problems or allergies, it can be used to test cosmetics, hair products, and products that might create skin irritation. Another form of product testing is computer simulation. Computer simulation uses computer models to simulate diseases and help scientists understand how certain products can treat diseases. Also, human-based testing includes several other alternative methods, such as skin irritation tests, pyrogenicity tests, MIMIC, or, modular immune in vitro construct, and scanning techniques, such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).
Animals have suffered at the hands of humans for hundreds of years. Testing on animals is archaic and should be a crime: it harms animals; it’s unreliable, and there are alternative ways to test products. Remember that desperate little mouse? Millions of animals in that same position have given up, enduring more pain than any human ever had to endure in a lifetime. Animals deserve to be free, to not spend life in a cage, to breathe clean air. They deserve to live their already-short lives. This cruel act has gone on for far too long, and it must be stopped.