It is certainly the case in western civilization that we are taught to believe doctors and medical researchers have our best interests at heart and that they toil tirelessly to save lives. But there is a major flaw in this seemingly compassionate status quo and a darker side that the general public either knows little about, conveniently chooses to ignore, or even worse, chooses to justify and rationalize. I am of course talking about animal testing and research.
We as humans have become so driven to control every aspect of our lives, to control every disease, to manipulate every bacterium, and seem to have this insatiable need to obliterate every illness from the face of the planet. Through this endless quest for health, we too often forget and ignore the suffering, torture, and abuse that non-human, yet fully sentient brings must undergo.
It is without doubt that we owe our quality of life today to the sacrifices of millions of animal test subjects who were forced to partake in hideous medical experiments and were left malformed, disabled, or dead. Pharmaceutical companies are required to test their products on animals before their products can be licensed and marketed and as a result, dogs and numerous other animals are forced fed medication. One of the most common tests performed on these lab animals is a sub-acute toxicity test where the drug is administered in ever increasing doses over a period of weeks just below the level where rapid poisoning could occur. However, tests for chronic toxicity in these medications are required to last over two years.
Another form of medical research performed once again on fully sentient beings is classified under the seemingly benign umbrella term of “applied research.” In applied research animal test subjects are injected with diseases so as to have the effects noted as the virus spreads throughout the body. Animals are also subjected to conditions to cause them to develop a problem and then scientists will note how the disease affects the body. For example, air supply may be cut off causing the animal to suffer a stroke or neurotoxins will be injected to simulate degenerative diseases.
To suggest that all medical research and progress be thrown out simply because it was associated with or achieved through animal testing is ludicrous. But with advances in medicine, animal testing has been rendered totally irrelevant and is an outdated form of cruelty. There are numerous alternatives to such needless torture, such as….
- Test tube studies on human cultures and tissue samples. Stem cells and donated organs can also be used to conduct any number of experiments currently conducted on animals. Besides simply being totally cruelty-free, results obtained from human-based experiments are far more accurate since when studying the human body, it’s a safer bet to actually use human organs, cells, and tissues.
The stress that animals undergo in laboratory settings often renders any results of said testing useless as stress can raise blood pressure, alter hormone levels, and change blood chemistry. Some of which are the very things being tested.
Animals react in different ways to tests than humans; obviously, as we are different species, meaning the results of testing will not always be accurate or lend anymore information about a drug or procedure to the researchers.
In addition to the numerous moral reasons against animal testing and disregarding its total lack of necessity, medical testing and research is rife with hypocrisy. Researchers make the argument for the continuation of animal testing by arguing:
animals used for such testing are similar enough to humans to make said research valuable, yet separate enough from humans as to make their pain and agony irrelevant.
Well, which is it?
“This specimen of meta-suicidefood has garnered a lot of attention lately. We’re not even going to name the product it is meant to advertise.
