Testing on animals

This post was written with the help of Eaton Turner who is a bachelor in English philology and literature at California University. Eaten is currently working as one of the best writers at the EssaysWriters.com He also studies feminine psychology

In the early 20th century, toxicity tests were developed in order to evaluate the safety of chemicals and products in the medical and cosmetics industry. Such tests include experiments, which subjectively examine the irritation of the chemical elements on the skin and eyes of animals and measure the toxicity of chemicals by forcing the animals to breathe, consume, or be injected with such toxic chemicals. Regrettably, this traditional testing methodology, including the infamous LD50 and Draize tests, are still in practice.

The topic of testing on animals for research and estimation of the safety of products is at the core of heated debate in recent years. By collecting data from various studies and reports, F. Barbara Orlans has claimed in her book, In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation, that almost 60% of overall animals used in the research are used for harsh product-safety tests and biomedical research. Though many researchers and scientists defend the animal-testing by analyzing the benefits in terms of the advancement of medical techniques and experimental research of various products, the fact still exists that animals are being harassed and exploited by cosmetic companies and research facilities all around the world. Though humans usually benefit from animal-testing, the suffering, the pain, and the deaths of various animals are not worth the potential benefits. Therefore, animals should not be allowed to be used in testing of products or any type of research. The lack of effective laws about animal-testing and animal rights and unawareness of the advances and discoveries made in non-animal testing and research methodologies are the major causes of animal exploitation by various cosmetic companies and bio-medical research groups.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the issue of the use of animals for product testing, its prevalence, and some staggering facts about animal exploitation. The paper will also analyze the current laws and their effectiveness. By means of various researches and studies, the paper will present some alternatives to animal-testing and evaluate the efforts to curb the rate of animal testing in various sectors.

Statistics and Facts

Each year, more than 35 million animals become victims of animal-testing in the world; the US alone uses almost 12 million animals every year, which is far more than any other country. According to the official reports, the number of research animals was recorded as 1,213,814 in the US in 1998. However, these figures must be ten times higher as rats, birds, amphibians, mice, and reptiles, which comprise about 90% of the overall research animals, are excluded from the nominal protections and rights under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), and therefore, they are not included in the official statistics of animal tested in the US labs. Even animals that are protected by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) can be tortured and abused. Mice is the most frequently used species in the US, followed by rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, primates, pigs, cats, and dogs. In China, it is mandatory for all medical and cosmetic products to be tested on animals first before certifying for the human-use. According to the research of the Humane Society, more than 50 experiments are needed to get approval for a single pesticide, and it requires the use of almost 12000 animals.

Animal Abuse in Various Tests

The research animals are subjects of enormous torture and abuse in the name of research and tests. The suffering and pain that research animals are subject to cannot be worth of any human benefits. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, animal pain can be defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience perceived as arising from a specific region of the body and associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Animals also feel pain in a similar manner as humans do; moreover, their reactions to abuse and pain are almost identical (for instance, both animals and humans scream in agony). When animals are used for laboratory research or product chemical testing, they suffer through various painful and often lethal experiments.

The Draize Test

The Draize test is considered as one of the most painful and deadly testing method on animals. In 1944, John Draize, a scientist of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), created the Draize test to examine eye irritation caused by particular chemicals. In this test, a product or substance being tested is put in one eye of the animal (usually, rabbits are used for this test). By restraining the rabbits, they are prevented to respond to the irritation in a natural way. Further, their eyes are observed for around 14 days; sometimes, they are even examined up to 3 weeks. The level of eye irritation is measured by observing the damage of three major eye-tissues, i.e., iris, conjunctiva, and cornea. Rabbits usually suffer from bleeding, ulcer, redness, scarring, and even blindness, and mostly these animals are killed after completion of the test.

The LD50 Test

The Lethal Dose 50 (LD50) test is infamous for the enormous torture and intense pain it inflicts upon the testing animals. The tests are executed to measure the dosage of the chemicals in a product that is necessary to cause the death in 50% of animals. In order to perform the test, researchers hang animals up to pipes that pump massive quantity of the substance into the stomachs until those animals die. During the test, such animals suffer from uncontrollable seizures, loss of motor mechanism, and convulsions. They have to endure enormous pain as death can take several days or even weeks. According to F. Barbara Orlans, the research animals suffer from diarrhea, vomiting, internal bleeding, convulsion, and paralysis. Even in their miserable conditions, animals are not given euthanasia as death is the set endpoint.

Other Lethal Tests

During the tests of possible carcinogens, animals are fed the substance each day for almost 2 years. Some tests involve killing the pregnant subject and examining its fetus. During skin irritation tests, a chemical is placed on a shaved skin of testing animals, which causes excessive pain and skin itching, inflammation, and swelling. In addition, testing animals become subject of an extreme animal abuse through tests like Toxicokinetics and Metabolism test, Neurotoxicity test, Dermal Penetration test, Ecotoxicity test, Carcinogenicity test, Mutagenicity test, and Pyrogenicity test.

Ineffectiveness of Animal Tests

Current animal tests that are approved by regulatory authorities were created in the previous century and are based on what was assumed to be the most advanced science at that time. The recent studies and researches have confirmed the ineffectiveness and various flaws of such animal-testing.

The Draize test is criticized for various reasons. The structure of the cornea of human eye and rabbit eye differs significantly. Furthermore, rabbits generate a smaller amount of tears than humans, causing severe pain and irritation as chemicals stay longer in rabbits’ eyes. Moreover, the measured damage to the eyes is greatly subjective, resulting in a high variation in final results. It is difficult to anticipate effects on human responses to products and chemicals based on the results of animal-tests because each species of animals show substantial variations in their reactions to chemicals. Such differences include the varying percentages of sensitivity to the products, as well as distinctness in absorption and metabolism.

According to the research, merely 1.16% of human illnesses are diagnosed in animals. More than 98% of human illnesses never affect animals. According to the statement of ex-research executive of Huntingdon Life Sciences, human results and animal test match hardly 5% of the time. Almost 92% of drugs approved by animal-testing are immediately rejected when tried on humans, because they are dangerous, ineffective or both. Gender differences among animals can cause opposite results. It is not applicable in case of humans. 75% of side effects diagnosed in lab animals have never been identified in humans. Vioxx was seen to protect the heart of monkeys, dogs, mice, and other testing animals. However, surprisingly, it was linked to strokes and heart attacks in more than 139,000 surveyed humans. In the US, each year, more than 106,000 human deaths are caused by reactions to medical drugs. In the United Kingdom, almost 70000 people are disabled or killed each year by severe reactions to drugs, which are approved by animal-testing. According to various reports, 70% of drugs which are known to be major causes of birth defects in humans are found safe in pregnant monkeys. In contrast, insulin, which is found safe for humans, causes birth defects in animals, as well as aspirin, cancer drugs, heart drug (digitalis), penicillin, and several other safe medicines fail in animal-testing.

Alternatives to Animal Testing

With the advancement in medical field and discoveries of new technologies, there are various effective and non-abusive alternatives to animal-testing that are available today. Harvard’s Wyss Institute has developed “organs-on-chips”, which consist of human cells in the form of art system to mimic the function and structure of human organ systems. Instead of animals, such chips can be used for drug testing, disease research, and other toxicity tests. Moreover, these chips have shown to duplicate human physiology, drug responses, and diseases more accurately than lab animals. In addition, various tissue models and cell-based tests can be used to evaluate the safety of chemicals, drugs, cosmetics, and other consumer products. CeeTox and MatTek have developed 3-dimensional, human tissue models which replicate exact nature of the human skin. Such tissue models can replace the use of mice or guinea pigs for skin sensitization and skin irritation tests. A computer-based techniques, such as Quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs), can replace testing on animals by creating reliable estimations of a substance’s tendency of being unsafe, based on the available information of human biology and identical substances. Archaic tests in which monkeys, cats, and rats suffer from brain damage can be replaced by modern brain recording and imaging methods, like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with the help of human volunteers. These advanced methods allow researchers to safely study the human brain to the micro level of a single neuron. The high-tech and modern simulators replicate injuries and illnesses and identify the appropriate medical response to medical injections and interventions of medications. The rate of accuracy of various non-animal testing techniques varies from 80% to 85%. The Director of Research Defense Society has confirmed that medical advancement could be possible even without the use of animals by adopting various new alternative techniques.

Animal Rights and Laws

According to Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University, animals also have fundamental rights to life and respectful treatments. The animal rights are violated when animals are abused by severe painful tests and research on them. Animals also feel the pain as humans. Both, humans and animals are identical in many ways. Therefore, animals and their rights should be respected as those of humans. Animal-testing is morally wrong because when animals are subjected to research and tests, which are often painful and lethal, they are not given any option. Animals do not willingly participate or sacrifice themselves for the human welfare and benefits. By enforcing the decision of testing on animals, their basic rights are taken away without considering their well-being or quality of life.

Due to the growing public concern, the Animal Welfare Act was adopted in 1966 in the US, which was further modified in 1970, 1976, 1985 and 1990. The act obligates registration of animal-testing labs with the USDA, requires checkups of research facilities and veterinary animal care, and sets specific standards for the research on animals. However, most of the research performed by genetic engineering labs and pharmaceutical companies do not come under the federal regulations as the species involved in those research and tests are not protected under the AWA. The lack of strong policies and laws about animal-testing is the serious concern in the US. However, some animal-rights protecting organizations like PETA are continuously working to minimize the rate of animal experiments. PETA funds to companies and governments around the world to develop and implement various non-animal testing methods. Moreover, some animal rights are granted under Swiss and German constitutions. The European Union has also banned the sale of all cosmetic products which are animal-tested.

The analysis of various reports and studies continuously proves that animal testing needs to be eliminated from the testing and research field. The testing-animals are subject to enormous torture and abuse during the tests, which is certainly violation of the animal rights. Moreover, accuracy and effectiveness of such tests is questionable. By means of modern technologies and advanced alternative non-animal tests, accurate and reliable results are retrieved. Hence, it is necessary for governments and various organizations across the world to promote non-animal alternative tests and protect the lives of several innocent animals by adopting effective policies and laws regarding the animal-testing.