Animal Testing
In my opinion, and many other animal lovers opinions, animal testing is wrong. Most importantly because it is extremely cruel but it can also cause delays in discovering new drugs/methods and it can be dangerous to humans. Animal testing causes pain and distress to many animals just because they are like us, it's a cheap way of experimenting and it would, apparently, be more cruel to test new drugs on people – it is just as unfair and horrible to do so on animals and they can't ask people to stop. Humans need to realise that we do not rule the world. Animals deserve the equal rights that we get.

A major flaw in animal testing is that different species react differently to substances so it becomes unreliable. We could have even lost very useful drugs because some drugs have opposite effects on animals to humans! Here are some examples:

• Morphine calms people and rats but causes excitement in cats and mice
• Aspirin causes birth defects in cats and dogs but not in humans
• Penicillin is a useful antibiotic for people but it kills guinea pigs
• A drug successfully used for Legionnaires disease in humans did not prevent deaths in infected guinea pigs.
• The cancer drug 6-azauridine can be used in humans for long periods ,but in dogs small doses produce potentially lethal results in a few days.

The animals used in laboratory tests are only like humans, they just aren't the same!

Delays can be caused by misleading results of animal experiments, e.g. The introduction of blood transfusion was delayed over 200 years!

When talking about animal testing, people tend to say things like “but it helps humans!” and “it saves lives” but people don't seem to know the dangers it can bring to us. Here are just some of the drugs (and what they were designed for) that were declared safe after animal testing, along with them are the results when humans used them:
"Thoroughly Tested Drugs”

Drug	Result (in humans)
Phenacetin (Pain Killer)	Kidney and red blood cell damage
Opren (Anti-arthritic)	At least 70 human deaths and 3500 other serious side effects
Chloramphenicol (Antibiotic)	Fatal blood disorders
Nomifensine (Anti-depressant)	Linked to kidney failure, anaemia and deaths
Primacor [Milrinone] (To treat heart disorder)	Led to 30% increases in deaths of human patients
Urethane (Leukemia)	Cancer of the liver, lungs and bone marrow
E Ferol (Vitamin)	Death of birth, defects in premature babies
Maxiton (Diet Pills)	Damage to heart and nervous system
Clioquino (Diarrhoea)	Blindness, paralysis and death

And those are drugs that passed animal tests! Things as simple as vitamins can cause deaths because tests were done on creatures similar to humans.

What would happen if somebody deliberately gave a human a brain tumour? Surely it would be seen as so cruel and inhumane. Would the criminal not be hunted for and prosecuted? Then if the person who gave the tumour told the police it was for human benefit surely he wouldn't get away with it! But for animals it's just different? So often many mice are forced to live with tumours. It's cruel and unfair on animals too.

Research projects have to have licenses from the Home Office but what they do is allow the researchers to cause mild, moderate or substantial suffering to animals that have no choice. The animals do not volunteer, some are bred purely for tests and operations and pain. Not for life.

At some laboratories primates, such as Marmosets, have to endure highly invasive brain research. These small, soft furred creatures have their skulls opened and parts of their brains removed, they are put through very stressful tests and they have to carry on suffering after that by living with abnormal behaviour. I have read of a time when a Marmoset was being used for research and he was apparently moving his legs so he may still have been able to feel what was happening to him, then after that they gave him more drugs but still carried on the operation. A professor said they should have stopped the operation at that point but they did not. Nobody would ever dream of doing such a thing to a human.
Something that makes all these stressful tests even worse is that every year thousands of drugs are failed or abandoned after animal testing. Also, it is estimated that only 5 in 5000 drugs that complete animal testing ever reach trials in humans and then only 1 in 5 of those drugs will be granted final approval. So hundreds, possibly more, animals are put through suffering for no human gain and certainly no gain to their species. Animal experimentation is animal cruelty.

There are ways of finding cures without harming animals these are; computer modelling, studying people in their environment and clinical studies (studying patients). In history there has been medical progress without animals suffering. Here are some examples:

Artificial Hip – Inventor John Charmley refused to experiment on animals and the hip he designed is still up to 'gold standard' to orthopaedic surgeons.
Childhood Leukaemia Drug – The first effective drugs for childhood leukaemia were introduced through patient studies.
Asthma Drug – Sodium Cromoglycate was discovered by a doctor who was allergic to guinea pigs. He exposed himself to them to induce asthma attacks against which he tested over 600 new drugs!
The discovery of the link between cancer and smoking, heart disease and other diseases were found through studying people in their environment.

I think animals testing should stop, there are dangers, delays and alternatives. It causes so much pain, distress and suffering to too many animals who have to sit and take it. We have to give the animals a voice, stop animal testing!

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