Animal Testing
...icted to drugs, subjected to near freezing temperatures, dosed with radioactive elements, driven insane, deliberately inflicted with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, oral infections, stomach ulcers, syphilis, herpes and AIDS. Their eyes are surgically removed, their brains and spinal cords damaged, and their bones broken. The usage of anesthesia is not mandated by law, thus is rarely administered. Despite all of this cruelty, not a single disease has been cured through vivisection in this century. For animal rights activists, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the answer is no. PETA pressures labs into halting experiments because they believe that animals are not to be used by humans for "food, clothing, entertainment, or to experiment on". PETAs stance is that any testing is painful, inhumane, and unnecessary when alternatives are available. The PETA website says that "animals, like humans, have interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded away simply because it might benefit others." For animal testing The benefit gained from animal testing is too widespread to ignore. Everyday life has been changed for the better because of this testing. As 1990 Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph E. Murray, M.D. said, "Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations". The numbers to back up this claim are over 440,000 open-heart surgeries are performed and 11,000 kidneys are transplanted every year, not to mention that animal experimentation has made possible the salvation of 20,000 kidney dialysis patients each year. Also, the ability to test on animals has made possible the relatively safe and successful use of chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer. Drugs such as this cannot be tested on humans because of their strength and potential for killing in inappropriate doses. Many of the antibiotics and vaccines used today were developed and tested through animal research, as were insulin and nearly all-modern anesthetics. Tragic Consequences More than 205,000 new drugs are marketed worldwide every year, most after undergoing the most common unreliable test method still in use: animal vivisection. The current system of drug testing places consumers in a dangerous predicament. According to the General Accounting Office, more than half of the prescription drugs have caused serious side effects that either caused the drugs t...