An article about our ethics, how we treat animals and why we do it.
By: Francesca 7.2, Ren 7.4
Animal testing has always been a problem and will continue to be unless we stop it. No animal deserves the awful treatment given to them. Animal testing has been brought up many times, but it wasn't enough until the famous "Save Ralph" came up on YouTube for the world to see. "Save Ralph" was made by The Humane Society of United States, on April 6, 2021. It was made to raise awareness of animal-testing. The Humane Society wanted to end the animals' suffering once and for all.
This video brought a whole new opportunity to change our ways.
Why do we even test on animals? First, we need to test our cosmetics, products that hold some type of acid, powder, chemicals and all of that. And obviously it would be illegal and unethical to test on humans. So instead, we use animals to test if our products are toxic, or unsafe to “humans”, but I don’t think we’ve thought about unsafe on “animals”. It is also unethical to test on animals, but the risks on testing on them are much lower compared to using a human.
Animals do not deserve all this torture, pain and all the testing. Animals aren't test subjects at all. They still have feelings, fragility, and a place in this world instead of serving as a test subject replacement.
Even the companies who are supposed to protect the animals from testing barely cover anything. 95% of animals aren’t protected. Sure rabbits, monkeys, dogs, and cats are protected but they’re still allowed to be burned, poisoned, starved, drowned and be exposed to many more chemicals. This is beyond outrageous! What we’re doing isn’t enough…
Ethically, animals and humans should have the same treatment, respect. Still, scientists still think that it is more “ethical” to use animals since using humans can lead to government issues. Animal testing has advanced our medicines, but now in modern times there are other processes we can use without hurting the tiny creatures. But we just decide to ignore those opportunities, this is what we need to fix.
15$ - 20$ MILLION of our taxes pay for the cruel, unfaithful animal testing laboratories, and the worst part is that they unknowingly use OUR money to support these labs.
Every day they overbreed them relentlessly, restrained for hours on end, Holes drilled into their skulls with no mercy, skin completely burned off, spinal cords broke, just for the sakes of beauty? For the sake of medicine that we don’t even use? That is just insane, if that was you in their lab what would you feel?
They go out of their minds, insane just for humans, but the question is... "Is it worth it?"
There’s just so many methods that are completely inhuman. Plain torture. There are so many other methods that don’t include animals, the poor 100 million animals being killed in laboratories. 90% of the animal testing aren’t fit for humans' treatment. Most of the treatments don’t even pass as proper treatment because they’re lethal and unreliable. This just means that we’re wasting so much time, effort, money and countless lives sacrificed for most parts, nothing.
As an example, 85% of the HIV/AIDS vaccines were successful, none of which were, surprisingly, tested on animals. However, the successful HIV/AIDS vaccines that were tested on animals weren’t even usable to humans. This just proves that there are other ways to obtain successful medicines, cures, and even more!
On a newspaper, specifically The Independent, said, "testing HIV vaccines on monkeys first, then on humans in fact does not work." It takes about 14 years to approve of a new vaccine. If animal-tested vaccines take that long and don't even, go through we're wasting 14 years and about 1 billion dollars (about $3 per person in the US).
As brutal as it sounds, there are some ‘benefits’ when animal testing is being done. Surprisingly, animal testing took part in making life changing discoveries, such as, creating new vaccines, drugs, medicines to transplant procedures, and blood transfusions. polio, many types of meningitis, typhus, cough, smallpox, tetanus, measles, cholera, and other diseases have all been vaccinated using animals in past studies.
Despite these facts, we still ensnare innocent animals with the guise of developing a better drug, a better solution but in reality: we’re just developing another issue.
They are small, gentle and easy to handle. Rabbits also have no tear ducts so, unlike humans, they can’t cry out dangerous and harmful substances from their eyes.
Unfortunately, this means that in the Draize eye test the rabbit’s eye is exposed to more of the test chemical for longer periods, which is one of the main reasons why rabbits are chosen for this procedure.
Over the years, rabbits have most often been used in the Draize Eye and Skin tests. Developed in the 1940s, these tests involve holding rabbits in full body restraints so that chemicals can be dripped in their eye or spread on their shaved and scraped skin.
It is extremely unpleasant, excruciating, agonizing and painful. Causing eye reddening, swelling, ulceration, even blindness, or skin cracking and bleeding. These are just some of the torturous events these innocent rabbits go through.
These animals have no voice, but you can speak up for them. Be cruelty-free.
In conclusion, we’re just basically wasting our time, money, effort and countless innocent lives. Just to get vaccines, drugs, and a sense of beauty. These products aren’t even accessible to humans. There are multiple strategies, processes, and other ways to continue our research without hurting our precious creatures. They suffer tremendous pain. But for what cost?
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