Animal Testing free essay sample

This operation helped doctors understand why people could go blind. Aristotle, another Greek philosopher, and Eras stratus, a doctor, both did tests on living animals. Animal Testing    3 Claudius Galen, a Roman doctor, learned about nerves and muscles by dissecting pigs, goats, and other animals. He became known as the Father of Vivisection (Watson, 2009, p. 11). William Harvey, a British surgeon, learned how the blood moves through the body by looking at the insides of animals. This encouraged other scientists in Europe to use animal vivisection when doing research (Watson, 2009, p. 11). Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist, observed animal tissues under the microscopes that he designed (Watson, 2009, p. 11 – 12). During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, people in the United States and England started fighting for the rights of animals. They fought against animals being treated wrong (Compton’s by Britannica, 2009). Most of the major accomplishments made in history dealt with the work with animals. Most animals are killed at the end of an experiment, but some may be re-used in subsequent experiments. Here is a selection of common animal procedures: †¢Forced chemical exposure in toxicity testing, which can include oral force-feeding, forced inhalation, skin or injection into the abdomen, muscle, etc. †¢Exposure to drugs, chemicals or infectious disease at levels that cause illness, pain and distress, or death †¢Genetic manipulation, e. g. , addition or â€Å"knocking out† of one or more genes †¢Ear-notching and tail-clipping for identification Short periods of physical restraint for observation or examination †¢Prolonged periods of physical restraint Food and water deprivation †¢Surgical procedures followed by recovery Infliction of wounds, burns and other injuries to study healing Infliction of pain to study its physiology and treatment †¢Behavioral experiments designed to cause distress, e. g. , electric shock or forced swimming †¢Other manipulations to create â€Å"animal models† of human diseases ranging from cancer to stroke to depression †¢Killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means Human beings and many animals have similar organ systems and body processes. Experiments on animals help scientists increase knowledge about the way the human body works. In the United States, scientists perform experiments on more than twenty million animals each year. That is way too many. Medical researchers study animals to get a better understanding of body processes in humans and animals. They use many animals to study the causes and effects of illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. I feel animals are tested for meaningless numbers on a chart and then killed. There are many cheap, faster, and non-animal tests that can replace the ones that are out there now. The first realistic software models of human and animal organs are starting to emerge — potentially replacing some of the fifty to one hundred million animals used each year for scientific research. Human skin model tests are now being used, including the EpiDerm test, which has been accepted as a total replacement for skin corrosion studies in rabbits. Products could also be tested on cultured human cells grown in laboratories. This would be more reliable because they are actual human cells. There are so many reasons to stop animal testing. Poisoning, shocking, burning, and killing animals is all in a days work for vivisectors. If these atrocious acts were committed outside laboratories, they would be felonies. But animals suffer and die every day in laboratories with little or no protection from cruelty. Here are the top five reasons why it needs to stop: †¢Its unethical to sentence 100 million thinking, feeling animals to life in a laboratory cage and intentionally cause them pain, loneliness, and fear. †¢Its bad science. The Food and Drug Administration reports that 92 out of every 100 drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans. †¢Its wasteful. Animal experiments prolong the suffering of people waiting for effective cures by misleading experimenters and squandering precious money, time, and resources that could have been spent on human-relevant research. †¢Its archaic. Forward-thinking scientists have developed humane, modern, and effectivenon-animal research methods , including human-based microdosing, in vitro technology, human-patient simulators, and sophisticated computer modeling, that are cheaper, faster, and more accurate than animal tests. The world doesnt need another eyeliner, hand soap, food ingredient, drug for erectile dysfunction, or pesticide so badly that it should come at the expense of animals lives. Monkeys are addicted to drugs and have holes drilled into their skulls, sheep and pigs have their skin burned off and rats have their spinal cords crushed. Tiny mice grow tum ors as large as their own bodies, kittens are purposely blinded, and rats are made to suffer seizures. In archaic medical training courses, pigs and dogs are cut open and killed and cats and ferrets have hard plastic tubes forced down their delicate throats. All of these things are done to animals in laboratories but if they were done outside of these places, they would be considered crimes. The animals suffer everyday with no protection from cruelty. For one thing, its wasteful because so many scientists have come up with humane and modern technology that is faster and cheaper than testing animals. Animal testing needs to be stopped immediately. ? References Canadian Council of Animal Care http://ccac. ca/en_/publications/audf/stats-aud/tablei/2009 Animal Testing Statistics http://www. statisticbrain. com/animal-testing-statistics/ http://www. peta. org/