Why Is Animal Testing Cruel And Inhumane?

“The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk?” but, “Can they suffer?” – Jeremy Betham. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), over 100 million animals including mice, rats, frogs, dogs and cats are killed in laboratories for testing purposes. Animal testing has been a controversial subject for years now. Some believe that cosmetics, medicines, and health care products should be tested on animals to ensure their safety; on the other hand many believe that testing on animals is cruel and inhumane. Not only has our knowledge and technology advanced to the point where there are many alternative methods of testing, but animals are very different from human beings, therefore making poor test subjects.
There are scientist and many people from the general public who believe animal testing is necessary to ensure the safety of chemicals, cosmetics and
“We are not 70 kg rats”–John Hopkins Professor of evidence based toxicology. The cellular differences between animals and people are what make animals poor models for human beings. In a lot of instances drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe, The 1950’s sleeping pill Thalidomine was considered safe after tested on animals but caused tremendous deformities in newborns. Another example would be the animal tests of the arthritis drug that had a positive and safe result when tested on mice but caused more than twenty-seven thousand heart attacks before being pulled from the market. “It is very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we are trying to achieve in the human.”–Paul Furlong Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University. Most of these experiments involving animals are not accurate enough therefore not safe for humans. We are only wasting the lives of animal subjects, which then make the unnecessary of animals just cruel and