Animal Rights

Allie Boender

Dallas Center Grimes High School

 Ingrid Newkirk said in a 1989 publication of Vogue, When it comes to having a central

nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

Animal rights is an issue most people do not know a lot about and they do not really like talking

about because it makes them uncomfortable. Animal testing for any reason is not just morally

and ethically wrong it is ineffective, a waste, and inhuman.

You would not use a dog to test your mascara or the latest vaccine, so why would you use

a rat or a pig, it is immoral and ethically wrong. People do not think about it being wrong

because it is not talked about as other animal rights problems and its a lot more complex than

simplifying not eating meat. If we think its unacceptable to subject a pig to a hideous death in

order to make bacon, why is it more acceptable to subject pigs to uses such as testing a new

cosmetic, or a pharmaceutical companys experiments with an over-the-counter cough

medicine? (Wright, Hoagland, 2016, Paragraph 7)

While testing these animals they are injecting them with different poisons and diseases

which causes them a great amount of pain and suffering. There is only one law protecting these

animals, The Animal Welfare Act, but even this protects the animals very little. It only covers

about 10% of animals used for animal testing because it does not cover rats, mice or birds

(Animal Testing Cruel Inhumane, 2015). Since that act does nothing to stop or prevent animal

testing it continues to go on everyday. While testing these animals 50% die from the harmful

injections they get, the other 50% will get killed to see how their organs are affected from these

experiments (Hofman, 2002, Page 2). When did it become decided that these animals lives were

worthless compared to ours?

 Some people do not care about the condition these animals are put through, being burned,

broken, and killed, they think humans are superior to all other species therefore it is not wrong to

use them to test our products before we put them on humans. These tests we run on animals are

suppose to determine if the products will be safe for human use, but do they actually work?

Tests can show great improvement in animals with disorders that mimic human

disorders, but when the trials are conducted on human subjects, the results often do not resemble

those of the animal studies. (Animal Testing Not Reliable For Drug Approval Trials, 2006,

Paragraph 2) There are many examples of this exact thing happening, one example is the drug

Vioxx. Vioxx is a drug that is suppose to help with osteoarthritis, acute pain, and

dysmenorrhea. The Food and Drug Administration said the drug was safe but then was later

found to be the cause 88,000 to 139,000 heart attacks within five years. This drug got approved

based on trials ran on animals that showed it being safe. The company who made Vioxx got hit

with many lawsuits after this came out. The Cleveland Clinic Heart Center did a human trial,

instead of an animal one, the people who took Vioxx had a 220 percent higher chance of

having some type of heart problems (Animal Testing Not Reliable For Drug Approval Trials,

2006, Paragraph 2).

If just one type of medicine can do that much damage on people who really knows how

many death and problems have came along just because animal testing is not reliable. This is just

proof animal testing is ineffective and just uses helpless animal lives for something that does not

even work on humans. If animal testing can not even give positive results then it just becomes

murder.
 Since animal testing is so ineffective it is a waste of our resources and animal lives. The

NIH or the National Institutes of Health uses about 40% of their budget for animal testing which

comes out to be about 16 billion dollars annually (Terrance, 2016, Paragraph 2). If the results

that come from these experiments are not accurate and do not help find cures to different

diseases, what is the point of spending all that money and harming or killing, all these animals.

PETA put out a statistic that, Each year, more than 100 million animalsincluding mice, rats,

frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birdsare killed in U.S.

laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and

chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing (Collins, 2014, Paragraph 1). Not only do these

animals get killed, they suffer tremendously before their life eventually comes to an end.

Sometimes they are forced to inhale poisonous gases, holes drilled into their heads, and

constantly burned (Collins, 2014, Paragraph 1).

If animal testing is wasting that much money and killing that many helpless animals,

would there not be a better way to produce cures while saving money. There is starting to be

more and more alternative methods to animal testing coming alive. Some options are in vitro test

methods, computerized patient-drug databases and virtual drugs, computer models and

simulation, stem cell and genetic test methods, non- invasive imaging techniques, and

microdosing (In Testing, 2016, Paragraph 2).

In my opinion I think animal testing is wrong and immoral. Imagine your pet cat or dog

being strapped down to a table and having drops forced into their eyes or poisons injected into

them, leading them to their eventual death. Yes, most of the animals we use to test on are mice,

rats, and birds. What is the big deal they are just rodents, is the attitude most people have about

it, but if we see ourselves as that superior over them why would we trust the results from these
experiments. Our bodies are seen so much more advanced, thats how we justify doing the

experiments, but why are we able to justify the results.

Animal testing is ethically and morally wrong. We are using helpless animals and taking

their lives to find cures that do not even end up working, and actually end up hurting people.

Animal testing for any reason is not just morally and ethically wrong because it is ineffective, a

waste, and inhuman.

Wright, G., & Hoagland, S. (2016). Counterpoint: Animal Testing Is Cruel and Immoral Regardless of the Benefits Associated

With It. Points Of View: Animal Experimentation, 3.

(2015). Animal testing cruel, inhumane. UWIRE Text.

Hofman, E. (2002, June). Animal Testing: Here is the Truth. Teen Ink. p. 22.
Animal Testing Not Reliable for Drug Approval Trials. (2006). Nutrition Health Review: The Consumer's Medical Journal, (95),

19.

Terrance, L. (n.d.). PETITION: Reduction of animal testing to reduce government waste at taxpayers' expense. Retrieved April

21, 2017, from https://www.change.org/p/petition-reduction-of-animal-testing-to-reduce-government-waste-at-tax-payers-

expense

Collins, F. S. (n.d.). Experiments on Animals: Overview. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-

used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

Society, N. E. (n.d.). Animals in Science / Alternatives. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from

http://www.neavs.org/alternatives/in-testing