Ethical Essay

Nicole Marsh                                                                                                            Marsh 1
Mr. Brown
English 1B
15 April 2013

Animals Have Feelings Too

Animal testing, also known as vivisection, is the experimentation on live animals for scientific reasons. By using animals for testing it allows new human medical treatments to be discovered and can even be beneficial for other animals. However, the results from such experiments are not always reliable and cause injury and most of the time even causes death to the animal being tested. Many people may think that animal testing is a positive and helpful thing when in reality it is immoral to inflict any type of injury or pain on another creature, whether it is a human or that scary but harmless rat living in your attic. In the U.S., the Animal Welfare Act, which became effective in August of 1966, requires that the testers use tranquilizers in any experiment that causes pain. Although the animals may not experience the pain at the time, in the end, they are all bound to die. Animal testing is wrong because it violates the freedom of animals, also known as Animal Rights.
Millions of animals such as mice, rabbits, birds, monkeys, rats, and even cats and dogs are being used in scientific testing. It is estimated that approximately fifty to one-hundred million vertebrae animals are being used annually for scientific testing. Not all experiments can give us reliable information. When people picture cosmetic products being tested on animals, they probably picture putting blush on a guinea pig or mascara
on a rabbit. Most people probably don’t realize the harsh reality of what is really taking place. For example, the Draize Eye Test, which assess eye irritations, has been doubted for several reasons. In this test, a substance is placed in the eye and is then evaluated every twenty-four hours for up to two weeks. The problem with this test is that the structure of the cornea of the eye of the rabbit differs greatly than the cornea of a humans. Another reason to doubt this type of test is because rabbits do not produce as many tears as humans do. With a smaller amount of tears being produced, it allows the irritants and chemicals to remain in the rabbits eye longer, causing even more irritation and therefore it causes more suffering to the animal. In most of these tests, the rabbits eyes are held open with clips to prevent them from blinking to flush out the test chemicals. In most situations, these rabbits are killed after this experiment takes place.
  Another type of test done on animals is repeated dose toxicity. In this test, scientists try to determine how much of a certain chemical is needed in order to create toxic effects on various organ systems. This test includes oral, dermal, and inhalation of repeated doses over a twenty-eight day period. The animals are then killed at the end of the experiment and are then evaluated for signs of damage on any of their organ systems. This test is not the most reliable because the size of a small animal varies greatly from the size of a human therefore there is greater variation of how chemicals are absorbed and metabolized by different species. In this case, you cannot accurately scale the amount of toxic chemicals it takes for negative effects to occur from a small creature to a human. The amount of chemicals it takes to have toxic effects on a small animal greatly differs from the amount it would take to harm a human.
Just like humans, animals have rights too. These animal rights try and protect them from abuse by humans and the ability to live freely. Many animal rights advocates strongly believe that animals should be viewed as people. There are many organizations out there that protest against the unfair treatment of animals. One of the largest animal rights organization is PeTA, people for the ethical treatment of animals. Their motto is, “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.” PeTAs founder told Vogue Magazine that even if a cure for AIDS was found due to animal testing, PeTA would still oppose it. Millions of animals are killed each year because scientists are constantly doing some sort of experimentation on them. Sure, finding a cure for AIDS would be an amazing advancement in medicine for people, but what about all the animals killed in the process of doing so? Don’t they also deserve to live the longest and healthiest life possible? The answer is yes.
Another group that is against animal testing is the American Liberation Front or the ALF. This particular group takes matters into their own hands. The ALF organization takes a direct, but illegal, action to stop animal abuse. These activists will remove animals from farms and laboratories, destroy facilities where abuse takes place, and even set up safe houses for the animals to receive the proper care that they deserve. Although this group may not be going about it in the best way, they are left with no other option when regardless of animal rights, scientists continue to kill animals every year.
In conclusion, it is unfair and unjust to test and kill millions of animals for experiments that may not even be beneficial to humans due to the variations between animals and humans. Animals have feelings too and can feel when they are being abused and treated unfairly. Although some people may argue and say that it’s better the animals than humans, wouldn’t it be best if it were neither of those? With all the money and effort put into finding new tests, or new ways to kill animals, I believe that they should use that money and time to create a new way to do these tests without killing anyone or anything.