Despite the fact that the present-day science makes no secret of the use of animals for research purposes, not many people know what deprivation, pain, and misery those animals have to experience in laboratories. If the atrocities committed for the sake of science went beyond research institutions, they would be regarded as violations of law. However, torturing and killing animals are regular practices for a vivisector. They receive literally no protection from violence.
The major argument supporting the idea of banning the experiments on animals is the overwhelming scope. The point is that it is allowed by law to isolate, burn, poison, starve, strangle or drown animals used for experiments (Festing and Wilkinson 527). They can be also made addicted to drugs and inflicted brain damage. Hardly anyone stopped to think that no matter how outrageously cruel and painful a testing can be, it is not prohibited to perform it even without the use of painkillers. Despite the fact that there are already a lot of alternative available, the law does not require using them (Kolar 119). Thus, the outdated brutal methods keep their position.
Such acts of violence could be partially excused by the necessity to test medications that are developed to save human lives. However, such kind of testing is even more inhumane as it is totally ineffective. Despite showing quite promising results in animal experiments, more than 95% of all drugs created annually in laboratories fail trials on humans, with only 19% of life-threatening side effects predicted. This implies that app. 120 million animals must be subjected to prolonged, intense suffering globally every year for 25 new drugs to be approved. Moreover, in particular cases, even those medicines that can be found among those 25, may present a threat to human lives. For instance, Vioxx – a medicine used for arthritis treatment – was tested on primates and other animals and proved to be completely safe. Nevertheless, its implementation resulted in about 150,000 death cases globally and caused more than 300,000 heart strokes (Armstrong 54). Thus, animals deaths turned out to be in vain as the results achieved seem totally inadequate to the sacrifices made.
Besides being forced to suffer from medications, animals are artificially induced signs of diseases that they do not normally get (e.g. schizophrenia, cancer, AIDS, all main types of heart diseases, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, etc.) for investigating the symptoms. The major cruelty arises from abnormality of such experiments as animals have to develop symptoms that they cannot contract under any natural conditions. For instance, researchers can make a rat grow a tumor twice as large as its body, blind puppies, kittens, or rabbits, force mice to suffer from strokes, insert electrodes into the brain of monkeys or break their spinal cords. After these inhumane procedures, animals are simply thrown back into their cages without any attempt to release their pain. They are severely damaged not only physically but also psychologically as they stay in their cages in constant fear to be tortured or killed (Armstrong 67). It is hard to imagine that such treatment can be justified by the necessity to test a new kind of mascara or a liner.
People who believe that only unhealthy, naturally dying animals are used for experiments, are wrong – all the animals are absolutely healthy and strong. All of them can become victims: researchers use monkeys, cats, dogs, mice, rabbits, sheep, pigs, birds, fish, and others.
It is logical to conclude that such experiments must be banned if we want to have the right to call ourselves humans. Unlike many other cruelties that we commit, this one is not killing for fur, food or for saving human lives. It is killing in its pure form – for the sake of killing as it absolutely fruitless in terms of results. This is what makes such experiments so atrocious and inhumane.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Susan Jean. The Animal Ethics Reader. Psychology Press, 2008.
Festing, Simon, and Robin Wilkinson. “The Ethics of Animal Research.” EMBO reports, vol. 8, no. 6, 2007, pp. 526-530.
Kolar, Roman. “Animal Experimentation.” Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 12, no. 1, 2006, pp. 111-122.