Animals Used For Experimentation

1. Animal Testing: What Is It?

2. Five Facts About Vivisection

3. What Can I Do To Help Stop The Cruelty Of Animal Testing?

4. What If I Need To Use Pharmaceuticals Or Go To Hospital?

5. What Should I Do With The Animal Tested Products I Already Have?

Animal Testing: What Is It?

Animal testing (also known as ‘vivisection’) refers to painful testing on live animals.

Animals are burned, poisoned, blinded, force-fed toxic chemicals, given addictive substances, sliced up, have holes drilled into their skulls, given deadly diseases, have their spinal chords crushed, made to suffer seizures...the list goes on and on.

There are three main excuses given for testing on animals.

The first excuse is to test cleaning products, bodycare products and makeup on animals to make sure they're safe for human use. That there are many companies who create the above products without testing on animals is proof that safe products can be created without torturing animals. And if those companies can do it, all companies can do it, so the excuse of testing products on animals for human safety is complete nonsense.

The second excuse is to make scientific progress. But seeing as over 92 percent of animal tested scientific experiments do not translate to humans anyway, this excuse is rubbish too. Vivisection is both unethical and unscientific.

The third excuse is "just because". That's right, there's a lot of testing that's been done and still going on that is just for curiosity. Some examples:  

• In 1996: Beagles had E. coli-infected clots surgically placed inside them to study septic shock. Within a month, ten of the sixteen dogs died. (Here scientists ‘discovered’ something we already knew: that E. coli can kill.)

• In 1997: Animals were shaken and spun in the dark to measure the effects of brain damage. (Not to do anything about the brain damage, just to cause it and see what its effects are.)

• In 1997: Rats were given spinal injuries by dropping weights onto them. The results of this experiment were that “greater injuries were caused by dropping the weights from greater heights.” (Now tell me truly: was it really necessary to injure rats to find out something that logic tells us anyway?)

• In 1999: Mice were injected with tumour cells for scientists to study bone cancer pain. (I'm sure that people suffering from bone cancer have already told doctors that it’s an extremely painful disease, so why make animals suffer to find out what’s already been confirmed?)

• During the 1990’s: The effects of high alcohol consumption and withdrawal were studied in various species of animals. (Seriously, rather than torturing animals, all the scientists had to do was go to a pub and talk to the clientele.)

• In 2001: Severe and chronic pain in animals was created by “sutures, lasers, freezing, nerve transactions, and irritants.” (Again, not to cure the chronic pain - just to create it.)

So, in summary, animals are tortured in laboratories:

• To test products that can be reliably tested without using animals,

• To get invalid scientific results, and

• For the heck of it. 

We can put an end to the cruelty of product testing by only buying cruelty-free vegan cleaning, bodycare and makeup products.

We can put an end to the cruelty of vivisection for (supposed) scientific reasons by withholding donations to charities - eg. The Leukaemia Foundation and The Red Cross - that test on animals.

And, last but definitely not least, we can take a powerful stance against all animal abuse - including that of vivisection - by living vegan.

Five Facts About Vivisection

Fact 1: Did you know that more than 115 million animals all over the world are poisoned, burned, crippled, and abused in other ways in laboratories each year?

Fact 2: Did you know that no experiment on animals is illegal? That's right - no matter how cruel, how irrelevant to human health, how redundant, or how painful it may be, all experimentation on animals is completely legal.

Fact 3: Did you know that 95 percent of animals used for experiments are not offered any sort of protection under the law?

Fact 4: Did you know that there are reliable, cost-effective and valid alternatives to animal experimentation? Despite this, the law doesn't actually require that they be used, and so the result is that industry - mired in tradition, and supported by the consumers - simply doesn't bother changing to non-animal experiments.

Fact 5: Did you know that 92 percent of drugs deemed safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials? That's right, they turn out to be useless or dangerous when used on humans. Thalidomide is one of the most famous examples of this. Millions upon millions of animals were tortured to test this drug and, based on those tests, it was considered safe for human use. But, it practice, it ended up causing deformities in humans.

For more details, read the scientifically-substantiated information provided in a booklet called Physicians Convincingly Argue That Animal Testing Seriously Impedes Progress in Human Medicine While Vivisection Industry Profits by nonprofit organisation PRISM (People for Reason in Science and Medicine).

You'll see that while vivisectors claim that advances are made possible through vivisection, the exact opposite is true: vivisection actually hampers medical progress.

Summary: vivisection is both immoral and unempirical.

What Can I Do To Help Stop The Cruelty Of Animal Testing?

The short answer is: go vegan. That not only takes care of the cruelty of animal testing, but of all animal cruelty.

But, on a day-to-day, practical level, here's how you can withdraw your support of (and help stop) animal testing:

• Buy cruelty-free makeup.

• Buy cruelty-free cleaning products.

• Buy cruelty-free bodycare products.

Cruelty-free products have the following qualities:

• The product contains no animal or animal-derived ingredients.

• The individual ingredients within the product aren’t tested on animals.

• The product itself isn't tested on animals.

Generally, the companies that create these products will print this information on the product for people who want to live cruelty-free. Look for words like: "vegan", "not tested on animals", "no animal testing or ingredients", or "certified cruelty-free".

If in doubt, you call or email the company to check before you buy. You'll find that companies with vegan products will be very forthcoming about the cruelty-free-ness of their products.

You'll also find that companies that test tend not to be so forthcoming. The employees often don't have a straightforward answer to the simple question "Are your products tested on animals?", or they'll leave a message for someone who's meant to know but who never calls you back. That's been my experience anyway. Those companies know very well that there are many people who don't approve of animal testing and the individuals working there aren't necessarily keen on confronting that head-on with an query from a concerned consumer.

You can also help others go cruelty-free by buying vegan products for them. Tell them why you bought it, where you bought it from, and encourage them to keep buying it in the future.

• You can still eat vegan: legumes, grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds.

• You can dress vegan by not wearing suede, leather, fur, wool, sheepskin, silk, or feathers.

• You can entertain yourself in a cruelty-free way by not attending events (eg. rodeos, horseracing) or going to places (eg. zoos, aquariums) that use animals.

• You can save lives by adopting animals from shelters, and desexing your current companion animals to make sure you don't add more individuals to the current overpopulation.

In other words, if it's impossible in your country to go cruelty-free in terms of cleaning products, body care products and makeup, it's still very possible to go cruelty-free in all the other areas.

To continue the list of what you can do to help stop the abuse of vivisection:

• Research before you give so that you only donate to charities which don't test on animals (eg. The Leukaemia Foundation and The Red Cross fund animal abuse as they do animal testing).

• As all the current pharmaceuticals available have been tested on animals, it's impossible to buy cruelty-free medication. So the way we can help animals is strive to stay healthy enough to not need meds in the first place (and that's easy when you eat vegan!). Furthermore, if we do get sick, we can use animal-friendly medicine (eg. acupuncture, chiropractic, etc) instead of going straight to the doctor or chemist.

So while we're working towards a world where all medicines and medical research is cruelty-free, we can, in the meantime, live cruelty-free lives in all other ways by living vegan.

What If I Need To Use Pharmaceuticals Or Go To Hospital?

I can't possibly explain this better than Professor Gary L. Francione, so I'll let him do the talking here. The following is from the FAQ page from his website The Abolitionist Approach:

Answer: No, it is not. Those who support animal exploitation often argue that accepting the “benefits” of animal use is inconsistent with criticizing the use of animals.

This position, of course, makes no sense. Most of us are opposed to racial discrimination, and yet we live in a society in which white middle-class people enjoy the benefits of past racial discrimination; that is, the majority enjoys a standard of living that it would not have had there been a nondiscriminatory, equitable distribution of resources, including educational and job opportunities. Many of us support measures, such as affirmative action, that are intended to correct past discrimination. But those who oppose racial discrimination are not obligated to leave the United States or to commit suicide because we cannot avoid the fact that white people are beneficiaries of past discrimination against people of color.

Consider another example: assume that we find that the local water company employs child labor and we object to child labor. Are we obligated to die of dehydration because the water company has chosen to violate the rights of children? No, of course not. We would be obligated to support the abolition of this use of children, but we would not be obligated to die. Similarly, we should join together collectively and demand an end to animal exploitation, but we are not obligated to accept animal exploitation or forego any benefits that it may provide.

We certainly could develop drugs and surgical procedures without the use of animals, and many would prefer we do so. Those who object to animal use for these purposes, however, have no control as individuals over government regulations or corporate policies concerning animals. To say that they cannot consistently criticize the actions of government or industry while they derive benefits from these actions, over which they have no control, is absurd as a matter of logic. And as a matter of political ideology, it is a most disturbing endorsement of unquestioned obeisance to the policies of the corporate state. Indeed, the notion that we must either embrace animal exploitation or reject anything that involves animal use is eerily like the reactionary slogan “love it or leave it,” uttered by the pseudo-patriots who criticized opponents of American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Moreover, humans have so commodified animals that it is virtually impossible to avoid animal exploitation completely. Animal by-products are used in a wide variety of things, including the asphalt on roads and synthetic fabrics. But the impossibility of avoiding all contact with animal exploitation does not mean that we cannot avoid the most obvious and serious forms of exploitation. The individual who is not stranded in a lifeboat or on a mountaintop always has it within her power to avoid eating meat and dairy products, products that could not be produced without the use of animals, unlike drugs and medical procedures, which could be developed without animal testing."

What Should I Do With The Animal Tested Products I Already Have?

When a person discovers the cruelty behind animal tested cleaning products, bodycare products and makeup, one thing is clear: buying more such products is out of the question.

What's not quite as clear is what to do with the animal tested products one already has. There are two basic schools of thought:

• Some people feel that it's wasteful to throw the product away and disrespectful to the animal who suffered and was killed for it to be tested.
• Others feel that the only thing to do is to completely and immediately do away with all of the animal tested products and start fresh with cruelty-free ones.

Think on it, and make your decision.