should animals be used for researches?

Composition II
Flavia Guberaj
24/01/2014

Should animals be used for different researches or testing products?

In different places of the world a lot of researches and product’s tests proceed by using animals. And for decades the debate of “should animals be used for these experiments?” has been inevitable. F. Barbara Orlans, in her book called “In The Name Of Science: Issues In Responsible Animal Experimentation”, says that the biomedical researches and testing the product’s safety are the experiments in which sixty percent of animals are being used. Maybe not all the people in the world see animals as me or as other humans that think like me. Not all the people see animals as species like us, with their own rights. There are a lot of people that see an animal as a “thing” that is been born for researches and for testing products for our safety. Another reason that animals should not bee used for these experiments is because not always the tests that are proceed in animal’s body have a successful end. So the suffer or the death of animals is not worth any profit to human. And the third reason is that they can use other ways to do these researches or tests, without the need of animals. Therefore people should stop using animals for their researches or for testing their new products.

First, we have no right to abuse with animal’s rights. I want to start with the words of Tom Regan, a professor that gives philosophy’s lessons at North Carolina State University, that are: “Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment…This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment.” (qtd. In Orlans 26). Animals are creatures of GOD just like people and we can not just put them on a table and do experiments to them. If we act like this than we are violate them and we don’t let them the right to choose if they want to be part of these ore not. Experiments like product’s testing are sometimes a painful and torturing procedures for the animals. Maybe animals can not talk to say what is right for them and to make a choice, but this does not mean that we, people, have the right to make such painful decisions like these. Yes, if we have an animal in our house we make decisions by caring them but not by torturing them. “Risks are not morally transferable to those who do not choose to take them.” (qtd. In Orlans 26). We make decisions for animals because we know that they don’t have the ability to talk in our “human” language to make their own decisions by themselves. When human decide to use animals for researches or product’s testing they decide by not thinking of the wellbeing of animals but their own interest and benefits. So, we have to stop these experiments cause violates the rights of these unprotected creatures.

Second, the suffer and death of animals in these experiments are not worth any profit to people. “The American Veterinary Medial Association defines animal pain unpleasant sensory and emotional experience perceived as arising from the specific region of the body and associated with actual or potential tisse damage.”(Orlans 129). If someone take and torture us with different laboratory substances we will feel pain. The same thing happens with animals that are used for tests or laboratory researches. Animals have feelings like us and they feel pain too cause their body is a normal body with blood, heart, and meat. In testing toxicity procedures there are two kinds of tests: Draize and LD50. These two kinds of tests are painful and sometimes cause death of most of the animal used. The Draize test is a procedure in which the substance goes into the animal(rabbit in this test) eyes. This substance cause blindness and is really brutal for the animal. In the LD50 test they use a substance that goes with a tube in the stomach of animals and the dosage of this substance causes death. It is a painful death cause it lasts for days until an animal die. Michael Balls, in his article “Time to Reform Toxic Tests” calls the LD50 test “scientifically unjustifiable. The precision purports to provide is an illusion because of uncontrollable biological variables.”(31). The number of the Draize and LD50 tests proceeded is lower now-days but anyway these toxicity tests should be eliminated cause the suffer, the pain, and the death of animals is a waste of lives and time too.

Third, why make animals suffer when there are a many other ways that can be useful without the need of animals? The Body Shop, a cosmetic institution in London, has published a brochure named In Against Animal Testing in which it says that they “use natural ingredients, like bananas and Basil nut oil, as well as other with a long of safe human usage” rather than using animals. Instead of doing tests for the safety of human skin from some substances on animal’s skin they can do them on artificial skin. Another example of products that can be useful for researches is the Eyetex. This product is just the same like the real eyes of humans and it turns muddy when any substance cause damage. By using this synthetic product researchers can find answers for different substances that may be dangerous for people’s eyes. You can even use computers that now-days they are becoming useful for all the issues of life like: medicine, finance, cosmetics etc… Using animals in brutal ways in these researches instead of using objects that are not creatures is needless.

Anyhow, some people think that animals are inferior so they are born to suffer and being used in experiments. Maybe animals have not the ability to speak or to choose but they have a heart,a brain and a body so they have the right to live their own life in peace without any torturing processes. Why we have to think about our own interest without asking what we are doing to these scared and “inferior”(as people call them) creatures? In an article “Is Your Experiment Really Necessary?” Sheila Silock says: “Animals may themselves be the beneficiaries of animal experiments. But the value that we place on the quality of their lives is determined by their perceived to humans.”(34). By thinking on our well being we are not justified as how we cruelly treat the poor animals. Humans should fix their worth by the way they treat other creatures of Mother Earth too. “Animals are subjects of life just like human beings are, and a subject of life has inherent value. They are…ends in themselves.”(qtd. In Orlans 26). So we are equal to animals and they have inherent value like us. We don’t have the right to abuse with them and to discriminate their lives just cause they are not “people”. People does not mean GOD!
I can not justify the way that people treat animals for their interests. I do not find any strong or reasonable reason to torture animals just like they were toys without feelings, without heart, and without soul. They have the right to choose but they can not cause they do not have the ability to talk and to say what is wrong. Even if they are not “human” they have the right to have a peaceful life and to live without pains caused by equal creatures like them, by us! Why choosing to do experiments by making them suffer or even worst, die, when there are many other ways without the need of animals? We are not GOD to choose to punish them with pain or death. By treating them badly we show that we do not have any value as creatures of Mother Earth. We have to put ourselves in their place and just for a second we could imagine how it should be to take you in a laboratory and putting you substances that may cause you pain, suffer and even die. If being a human with great values means to be cruel with animals and to treat them like simple objects then I call myself a really bad person without values. If being humanistic means to be selfish against animals rights then I am a cruel person. But I know one thing that doing like superior and playing GOD’s role does not make your life better or does not make you GOD so STOP violate other living creatures and be realistic that you are just one of all the “creatures” in earth and live your life without destroying others life(including animals). People always try to find peace in their lives but I want to conclude with a phrase of a great person and maybe all these people will find the answer of this peace that they want so much:“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” (cit. Ghandi).