Prompt: Medical researchers, cosmetic companies, and others perform experiments on animals. Many people feel that experimentation on animals is wrong and should be stopped immediately because animals do feel pain and there are other alternatives. How do you feel? State your position and explain your reasons.
Experiments are a vital part of the scientific process and the process of creating a new product or a medical treatment. Consumers and patients feel safer when we know what we put on our bodies and what doctors are doing to it is generally safe. However, to achieve this sense of security, it is quite often animals who are forced to the (no pun intended) guinea pigs if these experiments. Oftentimes the experiments bring about disastrous or even deadly results before it reaches us, causing these innocent animals to suffer. Is the harming of one being for the sake of others right? Experimentation on animals is an action that should be stopped because it is causing unnecessary harm to animals and is thus morally wrong; likewise, as the amount of animal experimentation increases, so shall the number of animal deaths increase.
Every year, millions of animals are poisoned, blinded, and even killed in cruel ways to evaluate the toxic nature of consumer products and surgical procedures. They are forced to swallow or inhale chemicals to observe and analyze the effects they have on the animals and oftentimes the results are extremely painful. However, it is known that sometimes these experiments produce no concrete answers. The molecular make up of animals can be drastically different from that of humans. The chemicals can react differently in humans than in animals; therefore the only way to confirm the reactions of products is to try them on actual humans. Experimenting vaccines on animals is similar because the vaccine may cause a different reaction in humans than it does in animals. Many companies already know this and conduct human research studies after their initial experiments on mice and other animals. In fact, products that make animals blind can also be sold to the general public. If companies understand that humans and animals are not the biologically equal and yet continue to experiment on animals before experimenting on humans, then they are causing unnecessary suffering for the animals that won’t produce the desired results.
As a society, we would be in an uproar if we were told people were being harmed or killed in experiments that produce inconclusive results that require more testing anyway. Why, then, are animals not included in our concerns for equality? Many would say that animals are not the same as humans and require less attention. They are correct; animals and humans are not the same. However, animals do feel pain. It is evident by their squeal and their tortured screams that animals do indeed process pain just as much as humans do. Animals can die from these experiments or at the very least they are left with disfiguring disabilities that make them incapable of living normal lives. Is it not wrong to cause pain and deaths to other beings? We are allowing our doctors and scientists to murder, the very the same thing they are sworn not to do. How can we let animals suffer and be killed for the mere hope of realizing cosmetic and medical advances that will eventually be tried on humans anyway?
If we continue allowing animals to be used and killed for experimentation purposes, where does this lead us to? It leads us to a world with a smaller animal population. We are already reducing our animal population by cutting down the forests and driving the animals off their own lands. Animal testing is becoming another contributing to factors to the extinction of animals. Scientists and doctors are killing them with their chemicals or leaving them so worse off that they might as well kill them. This reduces the number of animals out in the wild and destroys our precious ecosystems that rely on a variety of animals. If we continue to allow animal testing, we will no longer have a surplus of animal wildlife nor will we have the amount necessary to keep our planet vibrant and prospering.
Testing on animals has lead to great medical and cosmetic advances, but at what price? Animal experimentation does more harm to the innocent animals than it does good for humans. It causes unnecessary pain to animals and is thus morally wrong because animals deserve to be harmed no more than humans. Also, as the amount of animal experimentation increases, so shall the number of animal deaths increase, which will cause our planet do be barren of these amazing creatures. Animals are not disposable and if we don’t take care of them now and stop animal testing, then it may be too late and there will be no more animals to experiment on.
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