Effective experiments on living
creatures
Opposition against animal testing
Submitted
to: Mr. Garrioch
By:
Lee Kangbok
Student
ID: 111087
For:
English Composition
On:
Friday, June, 15th, 2012
When I hear the word “animal testing”, the
first one that comes up in my mind is “inhumane experiment.” Nowadays, animal
testing seems to be necessary for new drugs, cosmetics, and even psychology.
Whenever there are new discoveries from these fields, animal experiments are
done and after thousands of attempts on animals, new things are released to
humans. This animal testing has been used for centuries and it has worked quite
well, and this is the reason why animal testing is still widely used. However,
even though the animal testing has worked quite well, there are many protestors
against the testing. The controversy about animal testing is very hot issue
nowadays. I’m the one who also protest against the testing. Considering the negative
effects that animal testing will bring to our society, opposition is reasonable
and therefore, we should ban the animal testing.
In the status quo, there is very minor
degree of animal protection. Even though they are also living beings, their
minimal rights are not being guaranteed. According to Doris Lin, an animal
rights attorney, there is a law to protect animals in laboratories. In the
United States, the Animal Welfare Act (or
AWA) exists to minimize inhumane treatments of non-human animals. However, the
AWA excludes from protection all rats and mice which are most commonly used
animals in laboratories. Therefore, the AWA is very inefficient. Thus,
protestors demand new and efficient law to protect animals.
To begin with, and the most commonly used
point, animals have a right not to be harmed. Doris Lin clearly mentioned about
this point:
With few exceptions, we
do not experiment on human subjects without their consent. Just as we do not
experiment on humans who are incapable of consenting to experimentation, we
should not experiment on non-human animals. Non-human animals cannot give
informed consent, and the vast majority of experiments using animals are so
invasive and injurious, we would never even consider allowing humans to consent
to being subjects in such experiments.(Doris Lin)
Historically, animals were raised by
humans as stocks, or food. In the past, animals just had meaning of mere
properties. Thus, it was not so weird or creation of resistance to kill or do
whatever things on animals. However, today, animals meaning have changed a lot.
Nowadays, people raise animals as pets, or companions. It means that people
today think animal as one living being that has rights as humans. Thus,
nowadays, animal experiment creates resistance to some people also known as
protestors. Some advocators of animal testing argue that we can divide animals
as testing animals and pets. However, we don’t have rights to divide animals
into categories by our taste.
Second of all, animals are different
from humans. As mentioned above, animal testing is controversial because of
animal rights. However, if humans can get true and accurate information for our
lives, animal testing might be reasonable because someone would think that
opportunity cost of testing, abuse of animal rights, could be smaller than its benefit,
life-saving information. Sadly though, as stated, animals are different in
biologically and psychologically. Animal testing is used in medical
experiments, toxicological investigation and psychological research. If animals
are different from humans, how can we get accurate information from experiment?
There are also a large number of cases that animal tests failed. For instance, oraflex
is one example. According to John J. Pippin, and Kristie Sullivan, the editors
of Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine, oraflex was released onto the market in 1982 after year-long tests
in rhesus monkeys gave no indication of risk. However, patients began experiencing
severe liver toxicity and phototoxicity. More than 3,500 severe adverse events and
60 deaths occurred in Britain alone. Also, inocor(amrinone) is another case.
There was no evidence of risk for 2-year long animal test. Thus, it was
released for short-term therapy option for severe heart failure. However, it
produced severe or fatal thrombocytopenia which decreases blood clotting
ability. In addition, there are many cases such as thalidomide, flenac, butazolidin,
rezulin, and so on. As these tremendous cases prove, animal tests could create
disaster. If animal tests have this great risk, we don’t have enough reason to
do animal experiment with taking big opportunity cost.
Lastly, supporters of animal tests claim
that animals involved in animal research are mostly well treated. However,
there are many cases that animals are abused. According to the USA researchers,
it has been estimated that 100-200 million animals die in laboratories around
the world each year. Specifically, 45 million rodents, 700,000 rabbits, 200,000
cats, 500,000 dogs, 46,000 pigs, 23,000 sheep, 1,725,000 birds, 15-20 million
frogs, 190,000 turtles, 61,000 snakes, 51,000 lizards, and over 85,000 primates
in USA died. In addition, most animal experiment deals with vivisection. Often,
animals are subjected to all types of experimentation without the use of anesthesia.
Also, in common sense, it doesn’t make sense because animal research itself
means mental illness for animals. In the website, The maneater, Kristen Powers states, “Although the act provides for
proper food, water, sanitation, shelter and safety for lab animals, it does not
take into account their emotional well-being.” Testing animals’ lives are
totally controlled by humans. Think about your life that is controlled by
someone. Would it be quite luxurious and comfortable? The answer is ‘Definitely
NO.’ Even if animals are treated well in warm laboratories, with plenty of foods,
they will get mental stress and psychological pain. Thus, advocates claim is
totally nonsense.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that animal
testing should be banned because of the following reasons. First, animals have
right not to be used by humans. Second, animal testing has huge possibility of
failure. Third, contrasting with advocates of animal testing, animals are abused
in laboratories. As many advocates mention, animals’ rights might not be same
with human’s one. I don’t know the best answer of whether take animal rights as
same with human rights or not. However, I do know that animals are also living
creatures that have emotions such as pain, joy, fear, and any other living
creatures should not have the rights to abuse the other living creatures. Therefore,
animal testing should be banned.
Work Cited
