Animal Experimentation

Animal Experimentation By Victoria Webb and Victoria Martucciello

Introduction • Animals that are involved are mice, guinea pigs, frogs, albino bunnies, dogs and cats. (Shandilya) • Twenty million animals are tested and are killed annually. Fifteen million animals are tested for medications and 5million are tested for others such as cosmetics. (Shandilya) • Things that animals are tested for range from cancer drugs, soaps, and shampoos. (Naik) • There is only one law called the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. This law regulates the treatment of animals in various fields which includes animal testing. More than 90% of the animals used for experimentation are not protected with this.(Naik) • Buzzle.com states that approximately 20 million rodents are exposed to experimentation in a year just in the U.S. (Naik) • Rabbits are tested because of the lack of tear flow and lack of eye pigment. Rabbits are tested products that result in human skin irritation. (Naik) • Frogs are used in cloning research. (Naik) • Cats are used in neurological research and dogs are used in biomedical research. (Naik) • Some organizations that are against animal experimentation is PETA. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. • This organization exposed Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary in South Carolina which was holding over 300 cats that were in filthy, stifling, dungeon-like, disease-ridden storage units. (Naik)

Introduction • Many animals are killed and injured just because scientists want to test them. (Minton) • It’s not fair to them. It has been hidden from the American public. It’s illegal. People think animals are well treated during their experiments. Well it’s not true. • Animals become addicted to drugs, and are electrically shocked. They are deprived of food and water. The animals are also isolated, burned, blinded, exposed to radiation. Animals also undergo surgery.(Minton) • Animals are always being injected with caustic substances designed to give them heart failure, cancer, stoke, diabetes and other catastrophic diseases.(Minton) • Some animals after surgery they die or have missing body parts. (Minton)

Pros • 1. Animal experimentation helped develop vaccines for life threatening diseases such as Herpes, Hepatitis B, Polio, Rabies, malaria and mumps. (Shandilya) • This means that many lives are being saved because of testing these vaccines on animals. • 2. Animal testing has also helped with measuring blood pressure, and pacemaker technology. (Shandilya) • Pacemakers help a person’s heart beat and if it slows down, the pacemaker will speed up the rate at which a person’s heart beats. If the technology is improved, then the pacemaker will run more efficiently and probably keep a person’s heat beating for a longer period of time. The pacemaker would also go longer without needing to be charged. • 3. Being able to use anesthesia was first tested to numb animal’s bodies during their experimentations and now we know that it can work successfully on humans. (Shandilya) • Animal testing has given us humans a way for us to not feel pain during surgeries and in other medical situations. • 4. Animal experimentation had also helped with animals . • Heart worm medication for animals has been created from animal testing. (Shandilya) • Heart worm medication helps save many dogs lives. Heart worm medication gets rid of nematodes that live in dogs’ hearts. • 5. Animal testing has also helped in figuring out why cats live longer and remain healthy. Animal testing has given a better understanding of cat nutrition. (Shandilya)

Cons • 1. One con is that when experiments fail, the animals that they are testing are most likely going to die. (Jadhav) • If scientist’s vaccines or pills etc. don’t work, then something has most likely gone wrong when creating and constructing the vaccine. • 2. Many animals die because of human errors due to the concentration of the drug or the amount administered. (Jadhav) • 3. The animal can also die from human errors.(Jadhav) • If something did go wrong and the wrong amount of an ingredient was added then the animal might have an overdose and pass out or die from human errors. • 4. Experimenting on animals costs an abundance of money. The animals need to be fed, housed, cared for and treated with drugs and/or an experimental substance. (Murnaghan) • If a scientists uses too much of their money to create vaccines and pills, etc. then they could possibly go bankrupt from putting all of their money into animal testing and taking care of the animals they are using to experiment on. • 5. Another con would be that it is the best way for a company to conduct testing in order to ensure lower liability for the consumer’s safety issues. (Murnaghan) • Throughout the process of animal testing, many of the animals are killed and this drives the species to becoming extinct.

Discussion Questions • Do you feel that people/citizens and the government should take more action to try and prevent animal experimentation? Explain why or why not. • Do you feel that animals such as rats and frogs should still be kept to experiment on because they are not house pets like a cat or dog or bunny? Explain why or why not. • What is your opinion about how the animals are taken care of when they are experimented on? What do you think could be changed about the welfare of how they are treated/ taken care of? • Should animals be treated as people are treated?

Do you think animal experimentation is acceptable?

Do you think that animal experimentation should be continued?

Are rat’s acceptable animals to use?

Should animals be treated as humans?

Do you think house pets are acceptable to use for animal experimentation?

Data Analysis • From the first survey question which was “Do you think animal experimentation is acceptable?”,9 adults said yes. Eight adults said no and 3 adults were not sure • For the students from the first survey question, 2 said yes, 17 said no and 1 said not sure • From the second survey question which was“Do you think that animal experimentation should be continued?”, 9 adults said yes, 8 said no and 3 were not sure. • For the students, 6 said yes, 13 said no and 1 student was not sure.

Data Analysis • From the third survey question which was “Are rat’s acceptable animals to use?”, 14 adults said yes, 6 said no and no adult was not sure. • For the students, 5 said yes, 12 said no and 3 said not sure. • From the fourth survey question which was “Do you think house pets are acceptable to use for animal experimentation?”, 7 adults said yes, 7 adults said no and 6 were not sure. • For the students, 15 said yes, 3 said no and 2 were not sure. • For the fifth survey question which was, 1 adults said yes, 18 adults said no and 1 was not sure. • For the students, 3 said yes, 17 said no and there wasn’t a students that was not sure.

Conclusion • Here are some things that can be learned from animals experimentation. • Adults felt that animal experimentation was acceptable unlike the students. • Two students out of twenty felt that it was acceptable. • Both the adults and students felt the same about the second survey question which was “Do you think that animal experimentation should be continued?” Six said yes, thirteen said no and one adult and one student were not sure. • From the third survey question which was asking about rat’s being tested, the adults either said yes or no. No adult was not sure about this question.

Conclusion • Many more students said that rat’s shouldn’t be tested than adults. Also, some students were not sure. • Something that can be learned from the fourth survey question, “Should animals be treated as humans?” is that the students felt that animals should be treated as humans. • The adults were on the fence. Only seven said yes, seven said no and six adults said that they were not sure. This can be because the adults could have taken this to literally as in humans would be tested. • The students took it as the golden rule.

Conclusion • The last question was “Do you think house pets are acceptable animals to use for animal experimentation?” • One adult said that they should be used, eighteen adults said that they should not be used and finally one adults said that they were not sure. • For the students, three felt that they were acceptable to test and seventeen said that it was not alright for them to be tested. • As one can see, adults and students have many differences in the results that is taken back from surveys.

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Bibliography • Shandilya, Ranjan. “Animal Testing Pros” Available at http://www.buzzle.com/articles/animal-testing-pros.html . 16 March 2011. • Jadhav, Aparna. “Animal Testing Cons” Available at http://www.buzzle.com/articles/animal-testing-cons.html . 1 April 2011 • Murnaghan, Ian. “Cons Against Animal Testing” Available at http://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/using-animals-testing-pros-versus-cons.html . 27 April 2011 • Naik, Abhijit. “Animals Used For Testing” available at http://www.buzzle.com/articles/animals-used-for-testing.html . 16 March 2011. • “Hundreds of Cats Suffer and Die at Hoarders Warehouse” Available at www.peta.org . 20 March 2011 • Minton, Barbara L. “Animals used in lab research are viewed as commodities” Available at http://www.naturalnews.com/026298_animals_experiments_research.html . 22 March 2011

Animal Experimentation