"Federal funding with taxpayer dollars finances and encourages the torture and murder of thousands of animals in U.S. university laboratories every year. Experiments are conducted on animals including dogs, cats, rabbits, mice and rats that produce little to no viable results. These animals are forced into horrific and torturous experiments for such things as the testing of the effects of smoking (which has already been established), for testing the efficacy of household cleaning products and for the cosmetics industry. Those researchers that claim they use these animals for medical research have thus far produced no viable results. There are currently-available alternatives to all research programs including computer and virtual reality programs that are just as effective and cost effective that would save taxpayer dollars and would not require the torture and murder of live animals. Animals are not ours to exploit for convenience. They are living, breathing, feeling beings just like us. And if it's true that they are just like us, their welfare should be equated with ours. Wasting taxpayer money to fund universities and aggrandize researchers is an affront to American taxpayers and portrays our country as an inhumane nation. There are more humane alternatives and we, the citizens of the United States, want these brutal, unnecessary research programs defunded immediately."