Animal Testing, Should It Still be Done?

Animal testing, a cruel, heartless, dreadful experiment, that is almost a tradition to us humans since it all started from a simple experiment based on curiosity back at a time where there are no cars, only horses and coal-powered locomotives, in other words, the dawn of human technology, until the very moment this blog is being written.

Is this activity an issue?
Yes it IS an issue. Why? Because animal testing, is something that correlates heavily with the word "torture" and of course "suffering" for the respective animals used as experiment subjects. Don't really get it? Then first, let's take a look at just what animal-testing really is.

Animal testing
Is an activity where all sorts of experiments are carried out on animals. The subject animals can range from small vermin such as mice to big animals that we take care of in barns like pigs or cows. Like the type of the animals used, there are also a lot of experiment types. Some experiments involve dissecting parts of the animals, drilling and implanting something in the animal, pumping chemicals into the animal's body, and even a smoking experiment. (Yes, the subject animal is forced to inhale gases that the ones who did the experiment give, whether it is harmful or not, toxic or not. No matter the "variations", all the experiments are one and the same, it tortures animals heavily. Don't believe me? Well there are proof from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that further supports my statements. In this article, PETA also states that 100 million animals are killed in labs every year. Without further ado, here are the information that I am able to take from the article:


5 Horrific Animal Experiments Happening NOW

1) Meat animal research center

Following reports of horrific cruelty at the taxpayer-funded U.S. Mat Animal Research Center (MARC) - including that animals were left to suffer, starve, and die - the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) halted all new experiments at the laboratory.

It's good news that new experiments have been put on pause, but countless lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals are still suffering and dying in ongoing experiments at MARC - and that's why PETA is calling for this cruel laboratory to be shut down for good.

Adding insult to literal injury, the lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals suffering and dying at MARC are not even considered "animals" under the federal Animal Welfare Act, as farm animals used in agricultural experimentation are explicitly excluded from the law's definition of "animal". As a result, the animals at MARC are deprived of the minimal protections afforded by the act and are completely at the apparently non-existent mercy of the facility's experimenters.

2) Experiments on Monkeys

Every year, more than 100,000 monkeys are experimented on in the United States. Monkeys in labs are subjected to painful, invasive, and irrelevant experiments. They are starved and restrained, and they are infected with diseases and pumped full of chemicals and drugs. These so-called "experimenters" drill holes and screw objects into their heads. Eventually, the animals are killed.

Thousands of these monkeys are imported into the U.S each year. Air France is the last major airline flying monkeys to labs. Some monkeys are captured from the jungle, torn away from their families and stuffed into tiny cages. Some are the babies of captured monkeys, bred on decrepit farms in Africa and Asia. They are never allowed to experience freedom or the natural life intended for them.

3) Sex Experiments

Because this one is too graphic to be shown to public, I will only describe it in brief. The subject's genitalia skin are dissected, then stimulated with electrodes and by the pumping of chemicals into their body. Furthermore, their skulls are drilled and lesions are burned into their brains. After the "torture sessions" end, the animals' brain and genitalia are dissected. The worst part is, all of this are done with the absence of any anesthetic.

4) Military Tests

Each year, more than 10,000 live animals are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in cruel military training exercises. In a horrific, never-before-seen undercover video footage leaked to PETA, training instructors hired by the military are seen breaking and cutting off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing the animals, and pulling out their internal organs. After PETA filed a complaint about this disturbing video footage, which shows goats moaning and kicking as they are stabbed and cut into (signs that they had not received adequate anesthethics), the USDA issued an official warning to the training provider for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act and Congress called for an investigation.

Violent military exercises like these continue regularly across the U.S., even though most civilian facilities and many military facilities have already replaced animal laboratories with superior life-like simulators that breathe, bleed, and even "die".

5) Smoking Experiments

Health officials have known for decades that smoking cigarettes causes disease and that animal tests are poor predictors of these effects. Yet tobacco companies continue to force animals to smoke, even though more effective alternatives exist. Two of the world's largest cigarette companies still conduct painful, archaic, and irrelevant tobacco tests on animals, even though they aren't required by law and superior non-animal testing methods are readily available.

Even though these dreadful deeds are already done, the horrifying truth is that these experiments on animals fail 90% of the time.

Experiments on Animals Fail 90% of the Time. Why Are They Still Done?

Here are other reasons on why animal testing is an unethical and uncalled-for thing to do:

1) More than 90 percent of basic science discoveries from experiments on animals fail to lead to human treatments.

2) Eighty-nine percent of animal studies could not be reproduced.

3) NIH (National Institutes of Health) admits that 95 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in tests on animals fail in human trials because they don't work or are dangerous.

4) Experiments on animals divert time and funding from better methods.

5) Non-animal methods are available.

In conclusion, it is almost never a debate on whether should we still keep animal testing a thing that we still do or not, since it is clearly explained and proven that it is not that needed anymore, there are other methods and animal testing itself is not really that "successful", it rarely produces the desired result. Just put ourselves in the animal's shoes (if they have any), getting tortured and tortured everyday, hour, minute and second and just be thrown away when the experimenters are done with us, like we have no value, we amount to nothing. Does not feel good right?  As a matter of fact, it is far from good, even far worse than just plain "bad". So, let's stop these inhuman "behaviour" and save the animals, because apart from their morphology, we are almost the same, the animals have lives and they want to live it too.