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Animal Experimentation Essay

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Animals suffer just as people do. In 2009 animal experimentation was the cause of over 1.13 million animals, excluding small rodents, suffering in U.S. Laboratories (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). Animal experimentation is unethical, unnecessary and expensive; alternative methods of testing should be utilized. It is unethical to use the cruel methods of animal experimentation for our own benefit alone. The animals used in research range from birds, dogs, cats, and pigs to name a few. So many innocent creatures put up with the immense pain so that science experiments can be made and new products can be put on the shelves. Many of the animals used in the testing and experiments are blind, …show more content…

This method is used even if the product is not intended to be in contact with human skin, eyes, or mouth (“Animals in Product Testing.” 2011). The Draize test causes severe pain, itching, burning and often death. The LD-50 (lethal dose 50 percent) test is used to measure toxicity levels of certain ingredients. The ingredient is either injected into the animal or the animal is forced to ingest the product. The amount or concentration of the substance will kill at least half of the group within a specific time frame; the animals will suffer acute distress, pain, convulsions, discharge, diarrhea and bleeding from the eyes and mouth. The subjects that do not die from the initial dosage are killed to test their internal organs for damage (“Animals in Product Testing.” 2011). Animals are put through extreme pain and unnecessary measures for animal testing and experimentation. It is cruel and unethical to cause so much physical harm to another living being. Apart from being cruel and harmful to animals, animal experimentation is also costly. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it cost over 1 million dollars to fund each testing facility for one year. One of the largest sources of funding comes from the publicly funded government granting agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health ("Animal Experiments: Overview." 2011). Approximately 40 percent of the National Institutes of Health's funded research

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