Sejal Pamujula

Project

Presentation

Progress Log

Capstone Essay

Sejal Pamujula

Caballero

English

24 April 2020

Animal Testing

Over half a million animals are blinded, poisoned, and killed all over the world each year to test new cosmetic products (“Truth”). For what? To make us look better, feel better, and live better? For my Capstone project, I am determined to start a cruelty-free lifestyle and raise awareness of what is happening to our little furry friends. I also plan to raise some money to support a local cruelty-free organization. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved animals and once I heard about animal testing in labs and saw the cruelty done to them, it brought me to tears and I knew that I wanted to do everything that I can to help reduce my footprint in the contribution to animal testing. I wanted to further my knowledge in cruelty to animals and what is being done to them, but also why it is still being done in this technologically advanced age. I was intrigued to learn as to how people react and where their ethical and moral compass stands on this subject. With this research, I hope to better my knowledge on this topic but also educate others on the devastating effects of animal testing. Animal testing and cruelty challenges our general view of ethical morality because there are conflicting opinions on whether or not animal testing is just and necessary for the benefit of humans.

Before diving into the argument of animal cruelty, let us talk about the animals. Some of the animals used in the labs are guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, mice, rats, fish, dogs and monkeys (“Animal” and “About”). A devastatingly large number of these animals are tested and killed in labs every year. According to statistics shown by PETA, there are more than 100 million animals tested and killed in the US alone and about 100,000 to 200,000 just for cosmetic testing (“About” and Lingel). Animals deserve a better life. For humans to breed, touture and kill these innocent animals is unjust and inhumane.

One of the top arguments against animal testing is that it is just plain cruel. Not only are they enduring suffering by having chemicals dripped into their eyes, rubbed into their skin and forced into their mouths at high doses without pain relief, but also, they are discarded like waste. They usually have swollen eyes, sore and bleeding skin, blindness, birth defects, internal organ damage and seizures. After a test the animals are not given any pain relief and usually killed by decapitation, suffocation or neck-breaking (“About”). They are also in non-ideal conditions. In a lab in Germany, the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology, also known as LPT, the monkeys were treated “barbarically,” according to Kate Williet from the Humane Society International, and the dogs were kept in dirty environments (Busby). In fact, animals in a lab spend their time screaming, trying to escape or lying on the cage floor miserable and under distress (Lingel). In the German lab, LPT, dogs were laying in their own waste and blood. Monkeys were kept in very small cages, less than a cubic meter, and were showing high levels of distress and were forced to stand for a long time (Busby). As mentioned before, animals in the labs are not treated with any care. According to one article from Stanford University the moral status comes from the capacity to suffer and enjoy life. In that respect, every being should be the same. Animals, as much as humans, can feel pain and pleasure, therefore they should be treated with respect, care and love. The ethics behind the harm and cruelty done to animals is that they do not deserve to suffer (Liou). Animal testing is cruel in many ways. From the time they enter the labs to the time they leave this world, they endure nothing but incredible suffering at the hands of insensitive humans.

Animal rights activists argue that animal testing should stop because it is not only unrelable, but also wasteing preccious life. Scientists conduct several tests on thousands of animals, but only a few drugs tested move on to the human trials. In 2018, only 59 new medicines were approved by the Food and Drug Administration even though there were about 115 million animal tests globally. Another prime example is that there were over 1000 potential treatments for strokes that proved positive in animal tests, but only 10% of those moved on to the human trials; however most of the treatments did not work on humans (“Arguments”). In fact, there are even dog farms just to breed dogs for animal tests. Not to mention the animals in the lab are disposed of careless in incredible numbers (Lingel). 90% of drugs fail human trials even though they turn positive during animal testing. Really, out of 93 side effects for drugs, only 19% of them can be predicted through animal testing. In France, a drug to treat conditions like Parkinson’s disease and anxiety was tested on rats, mice, dogs and monkeys with successful results before given to human volunteers. However, during the human tests, one volunteer was killed and four had brain damage from this treatment (“Argument”). Its unreliability comes from the fact that humans are so different from animals. For example, animals might react badly to a chemical while it does not harm humans, or vise versa (Lingel). Looking into the ethics here, the main case is that animals should have the same rights and should be treated with the same respect as humans (Liou). Animal testing is wasteful and unreliable, in the fact that humans react differently to chemicals than animals. Therefore, it should not continue and make way for better alternatives.

As opposed to animal testing, there are many cost effective, reliable and better cruelty-free alternatives to test on, however, some comapnies still go through with animal testing. Animal testing can be stopped without harm to consumers and can be replaced by more effective alternatives. Companies could also use ingredients that have already been tested on animals or go through with the more predictive, cruelty-free alternative (“Truth”). Some of these alternatives are using human volunteers; vitro testing, which is the process of using human cells and and seeing how they react to products through a microscope, is more reliable and cruelty free; computer modeling, which is seeing how the human body reacts to a stimulus through a computer, is more effective and does not put anyone in danger; and finally, using human tissues to see how groups of cells react to chemicals, which is even more effective than vitro testing (Lingel). However, even with so many better and cost effective options, some companies still test on animals in labs. Companies do this to make better claims to their product or to sell these products to places where animal testing is still required, like China (“Truth”). But the one of the main reasons why companies still continue animal testing, even though it is not required, is so they can try out new ingridients, ones that have no safety data. So, they test on animals to get that safety data. Also, the alternatives to animal-testing are not present in every area so animal tests have been done in the place where there are non-animal test gaps. Another main reason is that animal testing has been around for a while and some people trust it more than the new alternatives, even though it is not 100% accurate (“About”). Companies still test on animals based on an ethical scale on the belief that animal testing is acceptable becuase the benefits to humans from research outweighs the negetive effects on animals. (Liou) There are so many alternatives to animal testing, some of them being vitro testing and using human tissues, but companies still test on animals because it is more trusted and they would like to sell in places where animal testing is required.

However, animal testing for medical products has been beneficial to humans in the past. Animals can be good research models (“Animal”). They are used to measure how much a drug is absorbed into the blood, how it breaks down in the body, how poisonous the product and its components are and how quickly the drug is pushed out of the body (“Why”). In fact, scientists also test on animals for the benefit of other animals. They test on animals to research how to keep livestock healthier and how to protect endangered species. Animal tests can also be done to further a scientist’s knowledge on a certain medical product or procedure. In the 1800s to 1900s, animal testing helped scientists with medical advancements, like learning about diseases, and finding methods to perform surgical procedures, like organ transplants (“Animal”). Animal tests also happen for testing for medical devices to see if it is harmful to living tissues (“Why”). Another main contribution of animal testing is that it actually helped with some major medical advancements. In the 1920s, the researchers Fredrick Banting and Charles Best injected a substance from the pancreas cells, now known as insulin, into a dog with diabetes. This substance reduced its symptoms and is now used to treat diabetes in humans. Another example is when two doctors, Karl Landstiener and Erwin Popper, injected a monkey with polio from a boy who had it, and studies researched the virus in the monkey. Their research was paramount for finding the vaccine by Jonas Salk in the 1950s (“Animal”). The ethics behind this is that the benefits to humans from research are morally significant to the harm done to animals (Liou). Meaning that whatever harm is done to the animals, whether they are seriously injured or dead, that is all acceptable because of the benefit for humans, since humans are more significant than animals, beings who are more primitive than humans. Even if animal testing is not ideal, it has helped with medical breakthroughs, like finding a treatment for diabetes, and has helped by being benefical for research.

The public is aware of animal cruelty and testing and community support from fellow citizens and organizations, like the Humane Society International, are helping to put an end to this. The Humane Society International actually leads a campain to end animal cruelty and animal testing for cosmetics, their campaign is actually the largest campaign against animal cruelty in history. It is called #BeCrueltyFree (“Truth”). The FDA also is trying to help, in ways they can, to stop animal testing. They support efforts to reduce animal testing and has research going on to reduce and find replacements. For the laboratories regulated by the FDA, they have to follow the FDA’s regulations, Good Laboratory Practice for Nonclinical Laboratory Studies (“Why”). People in the community also see the threat animal testing poses for the animals. In fact, 73% of Americans and about 88% of Canadians are strongly against animal testing (“Truth”). Moreover, Germany’s agriculture minister, Julia Klöckner, said that she wanted the number of animals being used in labs to continuously be reduced and said that “ ‘animals are fellow creatures and they deserve our sympathy’ ” (Busby). However, based on an ethical viewpoint, most people are, in what is called, the middle ground. They do not agree with animal testing, but are saying that animal testing should stop in areas where there is an alternative out there. They believe that scientists can use less complex organisms like bacteria, fruit flies and plants instead of animals. They also believe that the animals in the labs should at least be treated with the best care and treatment possible (Liou). Many people and organizations in the community want to put an end to animal testing and are trying to do so.

Through my research of the effects of animal testing to the animals, of how animal testing has been beneficial to humans and alternatives. Through this, I finally realized the harm animals are going through. However, I also learned why animal testing has been important in the past; it was brought to my understanding that animal testing has actually posed as good research in the past. Additionally, I learned about what the community thinks of this problem and the ethical viewpoints. With this information, I plan on making a video educating others on the harm done to animals through testing in labs. I also plan to go cruelty free in the process of educating others, so I can also speak about my own experience with converting. My intention is to make sure people know exactly what is happening to animals and encourage them to start going cruelty free themselves so save the animals being tortured for our wellbeing.

Works Cited

“About Cosmetics Animal Testing.” Humane Society International, 06 Mar. 2013,

https://www.hsi.org/news-media/about_cosmetics_animal_testing/. Accessed Apr. 05,

2020.

"Animal Research and Testing." Biotechnology: Changing Life Through Science, vol. 3:

Industry, UXL, 2007, pp. 547-551. Gale eBooks,

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2830700130/GVRL?u=beav56809&sid=GVRL&xid=d

c969f2d. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

“Arguments Against Animal Testing.” Cruelty Free International, n.d.,

https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/arguments-against-animal-testing.

Accessed Apr. 05, 2020.

Busby, Mattha. “‘Barbaric Tests on Monkeys Lead to Calls for Closure of German Lab.” The

Guardian, 15 Oct. 2019,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/15/barbaric-tests-on-monkeys-lead-t

o-calls-for-closure-of-german-lab. Accessed Apr. 06, 2020

Liou, Stephanie. “The Ethics of Animal Experimentation.” Stanford, 06 Jul. 2010,

https://hopes.stanford.edu/animal-research/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

Lingel, Grant. “Animal Testing is Cruel and Dosen’t Work: Here’s Why.” Sentient Media, n.d.,

https://sentientmedia.org/animal-testing/. Accessed Apr. 07, 2020.

“The Truth About Animal Testing for Cosmetics.” YouTube, Lush Cosmetics North America, 09

Sep. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDCwyfIlKv8. Apr. 05, 2020.

“Why are Animals Used for Testing for Medical Products?” U.S. Food and Drug Administration,

18 Jun. 2019,

https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/why-are-animals-used-testing-medical-product

s. Accessed on 09 Apr. 2020.