Animal Testing (Vivisection)

Although the consumption of meat and dairy products is far and away the leading cause of animal deaths in terms of numbers, the use of animals in experiments may well be considered just as morally repugnant. We deliberately expose animals to the dangers and maladies that affect humans in a misguided attempt to ensure healthier lives for ourselves. At some point, though, we need to question the relevance of addicting rats to cocaine. Animal experiments are misleading and more costly than alternatives like in vitro (test tube) experiments.

The industry standard LD-50 test is a good example. The experiment is used to determine the dosage required to kill 50% of the animals used in the test. Over the years the LD-50 test, which is used to test pharmaceutical products, has been repeated on the same species of animals and with the same chemicals despite access to historical results. Though many cosmetic and household product companies have agreed to stop animal testing, a number of them (like Procter and Gamble) continue to torture and kill animals to supposedly make the world safe for lip gloss and laundry detergent. This type of experimentation is completely unnecessary, as evidenced by a recent long-term ban on cosmetics testing in the European Union.

Medical testing, too, is replete with wasteful practices and irrelevant results. Animals other than humans, no matter how similar, are not close enough approximations to justify using the results to find human cures. Penicillin, a widely used antibiotic of immense importance to humans, is fatal to guinea pigs. The use of animal tests involving monkeys is widely known to have delayed a polio vaccine for as long as twenty-five years. Further, one of the initially developed polio vaccines based on animal tests has been linked to a deadly form of cancer called mesothelioma.

The perpetrators of these ethical crimes are not entirely to blame. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration obstinately requires animal testing of all pharmaceutical drugs. The Animal Welfare Act, which does not protect mice, rats, and birds, contains the provision that nothing in these rules, regulations, or standards shall affect or interfere with the design, outline, or performance of actual research or experimentation by a research facility as determined by such research facility. Self-government by research facilities is clearly a conflict of interest.

Just as animals do not exist for our culinary amusement, they also do not exist to serve as biological playgrounds for scientists. There are a number of cruelty free choices that we can make in our everyday lives to ensure that we personally do not contribute to animal experimentation. For more information, see the links below.


Links for more Information

World Animal Net Cosmetics Campaign

Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics

Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine

National Anti-Vivisection Society

Quick Facts

25 to 50 million animals are experimented on annually in the United States.

The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) does not pertain to mice, rats, and birds, which account for an estimated 85-90% of all animals tested on.

The USDA, which is totally inept at enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act, is also charged with enforcing the AWA.

Of the drugs marketed between 1976 and 1985, 52% were found to be more dangerous to humans than previously indicated by animal studies.

92% of the decline in infant mortality, a trend often used to justify vivisection, occurred before the introduction of vaccines derived through animal testing.