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Morgan Paul

English 1101-137

Carloine Reyonlds

22 November 2017

Save Animal Lives

Testing products on animals dates back to early Greek

philosophy. Susan Scutti is an American fiction writer, poet and

journalist and she wrote an article titled “Animal Testing: A

Long, Unpretty History” where she explains the two Greek

Physicians named Erasistratus and Herophilus who used animal

testing to “examine sensory nerves, motor nerves, and tendons in

order to understand their functional differences.” In the more

recent history, Scutti describes The United States use of animal

testing and research on drugs used in pharmacies when in 1937 a

drug called “Elixir Sulfonamide”, used to treat bacterial

infections, where the ingredient “diethylene glycol” was

poisonous to humans leading to over a hundred deaths. Before the

Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was passed, many researchers would

steal family pets, such as dogs and cats, to use for their own

experimental needs. Instead of stealing the pets, they now are

required to buy pets from a dealer that specially sells cats and

dog for research purposes. Testing products on animals for human

benefits should be illegal because it is cruel, is unreliable,

and there are other ways to test these products.

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The experiments that are used on animals are cruelly

performed. According to Richard Ryder, a British psychologist

and an animal rights advocate, in some experiments scientist cut

open the skull and remove the brain completely. Ryder also

explains that they will take away rats’ senses to see how they

move through a maze. Animals will be strapped down in a small

space while the perform a “threat of punishment” which means

they are shocking them so they cannot get away. These animals

are living organisms that function in similar ways us humans do

and if it is cruel to harm a human the way they are harming

these animals, it should be considered cruel to them as well.

Many tests performed on animals are flawed compared to

humans giving unreliable data. For an example, in The Medical

Research Modernization Committee (MRMC), “a non-profit

organization of scientists and medical professionals that

perform reliable search for the public”, in 1963 scientist had

already discovered cigarettes were connected to lung cancer. To

prove this, they tried testing this on animals and could not get

the same data within the animals. Since the data of animals and

humans did not match, it caused scientists to question the human

stats and suspend the warning labels on cartons of cigarettes.

Aysha Akhtar is a neurologist and a preventive medicine/public

health specialist and she wrote an article titled “The top Three

Ways Animal Experiments Hurts Humans” where she educated her

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readers on an experiment of an effective drug to cure different

types of breast cancer would have been thrown away because it

caused liver tumors in rats, but did not produce the same in

humans. This information proves that testing these products on

animals isn’t providing the answers researchers and scientists

need to cure human diseases.

With the technology we have today, there are other

alternatives to test products. It simply does not make sense to

test these products on animals when researchers have found other

ways to test the products with human data that is more efficient

than when tested on animals. According to the MRMC, the National

Cancer Institute (NCI), switched to using in vitro human DNA

cells to distinguish flawed DNA faster and more efficient than

animal testing. Also scientist can use human studies to conclude

their research. This testing analyzes the human DNA to see where

it is damaged and how the patient an be cured and even prevent

it from happening in others. The MRMC states that cardiologist

Dean Ornish, has found a way to “reverse heart disease” by

monitoring patients themselves with “a low-fat vegetarian diet,

exercise, smoking cessation, and stress management.” The best

way to find benefits to humans is with testing methods on humans

that do not involve testing new drugs.

Other people claim that animal testing has benefits to

humans. According to Patricia George, in the United States,

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there is the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 which regulates the way

the animals are kept in laboratories and also give them

veterinarians to help treat the animals of any type of pain that

may occur during the experiment. Henry Cohen explains in his

article titled, The Animal Welfare Act, that if and when pain is

caused to an animal it can be tranquilized or drugged with

opioids and anesthetics if it is necessary.

Lawrence Corey, is a professor of laboratory medicine at

the University of Washington School of medicine, his article

“Animal Testing Is Essential For Medical Research”, explains

that animal experimentation has been crucial for him in his

findings in drugs that delay the effects of HIV’s which then

causes AIDS. Corey’s experiments on animals has also found new

treatments for Herpes and Hepatitis B.

Although experiments in the past have led scientists to

cures for significant diseases, it should be illegal because the

severity of the experiments to get these results. With the

amount of research that has been done to find alternatives ways

to test products there is no reason to use animals in scientific

testing. Researchers and scientist are performing cruel

experiments on animals to find products that benefit humans when

animals are simply different than humans, their anatomy is

different and their bodies can react differently than the body

of a human.
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Work Cited

Akhtar, Aysha. “The Top Three Ways Animal Experiments Hurt

Humans.” huffpost. 11 Nov. 2013.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/animal-
experiments_b_4209541.html

Anderegg, Christopher. “A Critical Look At Animal

Experimentation.” mrmcmed. 2006.
http://www.mrmcmed.org/Critical_Look.pdf.
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Cohen, Henry. “The Animal Welfare Act .” animallaw. Michigan

State University. 23 Mar. 2006.
ttps://www.animallaw.info/article/animal-welfare-act

Corey, Lawrance. “Animal Testing Is Essential for Medical

Research.” ic.galegroup. 2004.
http://ic.galegroup.com.sinclair.ohionet.org/ic/ovic/ViewpointsD
etailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&dis
playGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&scanId=&query=&docIndex=&sour
ce=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&u
=dayt30401&limiter=&display-
query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentI
d=GALE%7CEJ3010002220&windowstate=normal&activityType=BasicSearc
h&failOverType=&commentary=

Scutti, Susan. “Animal Testing: A Long, Unpretty History.”

medicaldaily. 27 Jun. 2013 http://www.medicaldaily.com/animal-
testing-long-unpretty-history-247217