Ever year in the United States, over 25 million animals are used for dangerous and cruel experiments in biology labs across the country just to prove a few scientific theories right. Some of types of animals used in these experiments include dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, pigs, sheep, monkeys, chimpanzees, and more. Day in and day out they are subjected to biological experiments such as vivisections, testing of new drugs, infecting with diseases, poisoning for toxicity testing, pesticide and cosmetic testing, burning of the skin, causing brain damage, implanting electrodes in the brain, maiming, blinding, electrocutions, and other invasive and painful procedures. As you can see, what can be done to animals within the walls of a laboratory has no limit. The animals in these labs spend their entire lives as hospital prisoners. What happens to them can range from uncomfortable, to agonizing, to deadly....and they are all helpless to defend themselves. They live stressful, monotonous, and unnatural lives of daily confinement and deprivation. Their endpoint is a sufferable death.

The experimentations can include protocols that cause sever suffering such as long-term isolation, electric shocks, withholding of food and water, etc. There are also "stress experiments"  in which they conduct animals (usually mice and rats) to go through stress procedures. These include immobilizing them in tubes, shocking their feet, suspending them by their tails, and forcing them to swim to avoid drowning. Throughout the time of their experiments, most animal subjects die before the end of the study. Though chimpanzees are an exception, animals who survive their use in research and testing can be killed after the study is completed.

All of this, to me, sounds agonizingly horrible, especially when you imagine yourself as the animal subject, and I can't begin to imagine the pain they must suffer. A good example of animal testing comes from Batty Koda from the 1990s move Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Although the movie was solely about saving the environment, Batty gave us a good description of what animal testing is like. Batty Koda is a fruit bat who escaped from a biology lab on Mt. Warning in Australia and landed in Ferngully , and he hates humans. For a good reason too. Although his character is loveable and wacky, his is site on his life in the biology lab is truly disturbing. He had many horrible experiments done to him including the planting of an antenna in his head that picks up radio and TV signals, and from time to time electrocutes him. In his rap song he explains about his torture saying things like, "I've been brain-fried, electrified, infected and injectified,  vivisectified, and fed pesticide" and "They've used and abused me, battered and bruised me. Red wires, green wires, stuck 'em right through me!" If that doesn't say enough, in the full version of the song, a line from a scientist named Darwin who experimented on Batty said, "They don't feel pain, they just get used to it." Animals feel pain just as we humans do. They may not at times show it like us, but they do cry, scream, they writhe and feel fear. They have feelings just as we do.

Different organizations, such as the NEAVS, work to fight against this growing problem of abusing our wildlife and everyday pets. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is the only federal law that provides even minimal protection for animals in laboratories. However, it excludes rats, mice, and birds who make up 90-95 percent of lab animals, and 10% of warm blooded animals in labs, the law only covers husbandry- standards for housing, feeding, and handling including veterinary care. But it does not prohibit any kind of experiment regardless of the amount of or distress it might cause. As long as it is deemed "necessary" to the study, researchers don't care how much the animals suffer. They can even withhold pain medication. According to the USDA, 7.8 of all AWA covered animals in labs underwent painful procedures without the benefit of pain relief. As you can see, research shows that people accept animal testing only when they think that the animals don't suffer, and that it's scientifically necessary. But it isn't. Many don't see the torture that these animals experience. It is shown that animal testing is not predictive for humans, and is often irrelevant, inaccurate, and dangerous for human health. The facts make it clear. We can save animals by replacing animal testing with alternative methods that deliver effective, predictive, human-relevant results. We can end this unnecessary harm and suffering to animals while still benefiting human health.

Most of the information shown is from the NEAVS at www. neavs.org