TRIBAL TALK

Animal Testing

Nicole Curry
April 3, 2012
Filed under Voices

A conflicting topic in today’s world is animal testing. 

Animal testers and scientists say if not for animals they would have to experiment on people, but the fact is we already do experiments on people.  But, the risks to an animal greatly worsen when a drug is tried on a person. No matter how many animal tests can be done, a human trial of almost every drug is simply inevitable. This is because a drug tested on an animal can have great results while when tested on a human can be extremely dangerous and may not even work. So, why do we even have animal testing if a human trial must be done?

While scientists believe it has benefits for future medical discovery, this is not true. Most animal experimentations are not for health benefits. The only reason people believe this is that they are under the misunderstanding that animal trials help human health because the media, experimenters, universities and certain groups exaggerate the potential of animal testing to lead to new medicine. Penicillin kills guinea pigs. Aspirin causes birth defects in monkeys, rats, guinea pigs, dogs, mice, and even kills cats. Even though an animal test is conducted, a human trial was conducted and the effects are completely different in humans.

Another fact is that animal testing is cruel, wrong, and has a horrible effect on animals. You take a healthy rabbit from a pet store or its home and take it to a new and stressful environment (probably a cage). After that you inject it with a disease that it would not naturally come by in nature. Then you try to find the results that the drug might have on a human, which, in the end, is inconclusive simply because it can have a different effect on a person. Meanwhile the rabbit is suffering while you may not even be able to successfully prove the drug is safe or not. The rabbit might be messed up for the rest of its life, that is if it’s still alive. While no matter what, the drug or product will still be tested on a human.

This applies especially in beauty products. Because rabbits cannot cry, makeup testers apply mascara and other products to the eyes of these helpless rabbits to look for irritation. This rabbit cannot cry, or rub its eyes. It has to sit there helplessly when the beauty product could be irritating its eye. They also shave a rabbit’s skin and rub lotion on it to look for irritation. Again, this could have any effect on a rabbit’s skin causing it to be in severe pain; thus another reason why animal testing is wrong and should be eliminated from modern science completely.