Animal Testing Should Be Banned

Animals are constantly used to test the safety of new medical treatments, household, and health care products. The fact that the results of testing on animals has been proven to be ineffective to produce human beings’ reactions shows that these are unreliable results, but also inhumane cruelty to our furry friends and pets. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Amelia Walsh and today I will prove how medical testing can be completed without the use of animals.

CRUEL AND INHUMANE:

Imagine living inside a locked room without any control over your life, no control over when or what you eat. According to an article titled, Cruelty to Animals in Laboratories, “the U.S. law allows animals to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged.” To solve this we must implore our legislative branch to enact laws to outlaw animal testing in the United States.

ALTERNATIVE METHODS:

We live in a world full of high tech technology, because of this, there are now over 50 alternative methods to replace the need for animals in experimental testing. For example, Harvard’s Wyss Institute has created “organs-on-chips,” which contain human cells grown in a system to copy the form and function of human organs and the human body. The chip can be used in place of animals in multiple forms of research. We must force companies to use this method of product testing instead of murdering our furry friends.

DO NOT PREDICT RELIABLE RESULTS FOR HUMANS:

Animals are very different from human beings, making them poor test subjects. The National Institute of Health has noted how “95 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don't work or are dangerous.” This may occur because of the anatomic, metabolic, and cellular differences between humans and animals. Animal tests have been proven to predict unreliable results for humans because of the contrast in our body structures, which is why we need to end animal testing for human products.

CALL TO ACTION:

  We can ban animal testing by shopping cruelty-free, writing letters to companies stating that new ingredients aren’t worth the lives of animals, and also by donating money to different foundations to find alternative testing methods.