Animal Testing
...argue that it is necessary to test medicines, cosmetic, and house hold products, on animals in order to develop a safe product for the consumers. Animal testing is the key to the many medical advances that had helped saved millions of lives. Most of the advancement in medical science in the 20th century has been directly or indirectly related through the use of animal testing. Without animal research, many would not have survived diseases that were once fatal to the human being population. The benefits of animal testing are extraordinary. On the other hand, anti-animal testers argue that every year as many as "115 million animals are experimented on and killed in laboratories in the United States" (Fano, 1997, p. 35). Millions of animals are routinely cut open, poisoned, and forced to live in barren steel cages for years. Safety tests are conducted on a wide range of chemicals and products, including "drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides, foodstuffs, and packing materials" (Monamy, 2000, p. 98). The safety testing of chemicals and consumer products probably accounts for only about "10% to 20% of the use of animals in laboratories, or approximately two to four million animals in the United States" (Fano, 1997, p. 36). It raises issues such as the ethics and humaneness of deliberately poisoning animals, the propriety of harming animals for the sake of marketing a new cosmetic or household product, the applicability of animal data to humans, and the possibility of sparing millions of animals by developing alternatives to a handful of widely used procedures. Animal experimentation is a "multibillion-dollar industry fueled by massive public funding and involving a complex web of corporate, government, and university laboratories, cage and food manufacturers, and animal breeders, dealers, and transporters" (Orlans, 1998, p. 135). This is a...
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