Adventures Await In Wonderland

Stop Animal Testing!

If you haven’t already read my previous blog post on Animal Testing in the U.S. ,  please do so here: 

https://adventures-await-in-wonderland.tumblr.com/post/680481395019317248/pictured-certified-cruelty-free-product-logos

Considering Cruelty-Free: STOP Medical Research on Animals

We should aim to end medical testing on animals. Animal testing in all cases is unnecessary, outdated, and inhumane. This occurs in all 50 states, and without strict regulation on facilities, as well as little to no rights for many species. Animal tests and experiments are well known in cases of drug development purposes, and the medicinal science community has made many advancements through trial and error, but at what cost? I will be focusing on medical tests involving animals for the sake of drug development, and why the suffering we face in results of the this testing outweigh the benefits. I will also be answering to objections from an ethical and evidence based standpoint.

It’s required by law to conduct drug testing on animals before conducting clinical trials that involve humans. Scientists have had many successes and advancements this way, but notice that regardless of animal testing, human trials are still required before a drug can be approved and administered for pharmaceutical use. There have been many instances where people have been harmed in clinical trials due to trusting the data from animal-based testing. On the other side of things, there are possible drugs to be developed that have been tossed aside due to negative reactions in animals that could work for humans. Scientists have been able to create vaccines, treatments, and cures for animals that don’t end up working for us. This wastes resources, time, and money that could be spent elsewhere using alternative methods of testing. These reasons greatly add up to outweigh the seemingly small wins animal testing may have. We have come a long way in developing technology to be able to test drug development and its effects using non-animal alternatives. This makes the other tests outdated, especially when we will only move forward in technological advancement. With my claims, I am sure to face objections, so let me address them with scientific evidence and reasoning.

1.) Biological differences may cause some tests to fail, but that does not mean it has always failed.

This is true. There clearly has been advances made to benefit us, but there is no denying that biological differences matter. Humans and animals are obviously genetically different, but so are the genetics between different animals, and even between the same species coming from different suppliers. These all factor into how the animals will react to diseases and illness as well as the drugs given to combat them. We should not be relying on data from tests that will always have varied results and may not even be applicable to humans. Trusting this data from non-human subjects can easily result in drastic harm to humans. As an example, in 2006 during a clinical trial there were six volunteers that were injected with a drug in order to “dampen the immune system”, but in turn, this drug had the opposite effect on the volunteers, and caused severe reactions including organ damage/ failure. This occurred due to trusting the data from animal research. The drug was tested extensively on different non-human species with success, including primates, whom are seen as our closest match biologically. This trust failed them, and those six volunteers. Another clinical trial that failed, was for the development of an Alzheimer’s disease vaccine. This vaccine showed success in mouse studies and primates, but ended up causes brain swelling in 6% of the human subjects. 

2.) The alternative methods we have cannot replicate the same results as using the living biological system that animals have.

This objection is failing to take into account that results even when using animals are inaccurate. Regardless of the biological differences mentioned previously, the treatment of these lab animals matter when considering the data. The animals are often kept in unnatural conditions being confined to the lab space. No sunlight, in cages, being exposed to unnatural illnesses, and no pain relief all contribute to the stress put on the animal, which is going to skew data results. Instead, we have many sophisticated methods of testing, including  human volunteers (microdosing with monitoring), human cell tissues, computer models based on known human biology and existing similar compounds, and brain imaging like MRI’s to replace animal dissection. 
A good example of using an alternative would be for the drug Viagra. In animal tests this drug proved to be harmful to the subjects. However, through comparing the known biology of humans and animals, Viagra was able to correctly be interpreted as safe for human use.

3.) Animals are disposable and do not have the same rights that we do.

A good approach to this is from an ethical standpoint. Life itself is valuable in and of itself, and that alone gives them grounds for protection, or a right to life so to speak. While animals can’t verbally communicate with us, they are living creatures that have the ability to feel pain. Some animal species even feel more complex emotions like we do. Lab animals are treated so poorly, and many are truly treated as disposable with no animal rights at all. If you don’t feel that is inhumane, then you can still look back onto the main points above that reign true.

Overall when we compile the evidence, animal testing is pointless, and results in more harm to us than good. The data is often inaccurate when put to the test in clinical trials. In the long run using animals prolongs the healthcare people could possibly be getting, as well as putting those first human subjects in danger. Which let’s note, human test subjects are still required in the first place. If we already require tests on humans why even waste the time and money on animal testing? Starting with the more humane alternatives preserves the lives of the animals and humans alike, while providing more accurate data to be developed for the clinical trials. We shouldn’t have to suffer because of these outdated experiments. Let’s look toward the future and end inhumane animal testing.

Links to information used:

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-animal-testing/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814339/

https://slate.com/technology/2006/06/does-animal-testing-work.html

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Considering Cruelty-Free: Animal Testing in the U.S

Every year in the United States alone, over 100 million animals are killed due to testing. This number comes from numerous places, including tests for cosmetics, drugs, food, chemicals, experimentation, and more. With these categories listed I would say that animal testing occurs in way more instances than I originally thought. ​​Also, these tests are not as necessary as some think, even when done for the sake of medicine. There are few laws and regulations for the animals, experiments, and tests done. Which leads to unfair treatment of the animals being tested. So let’s get into more detail about what goes on in these labs.

I would say some of the commonly recognized testing animals for general people are mice, rats, rabbits, and monkeys. There are of course many more than this, but these may be what most people think of first.  The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) oversees the standard of care laboratory animals receive. Even so, they provide little protection for animals, and a certain few receive no protection at all. Those with no protection would be: mice, rats, fish, reptiles, amphibians and birds. Those species make up over 95% of the most commonly used lab animals. There are about 1 million animals held captive in laboratories or used in experiments, excluding non-AWA protected animals. This is why our number of yearly lab-animal killings is estimated at over 100 million. Labs using animals listed under no-AWA protection are not required to provide proper care or pain relief for the animals, nor are they subject to federal laws and inspections by any agencies. In addition to this, they are also not required to report on those unprotected species they may use. 

The animals are often kept self-isolated, in cages, and without proper care. The animals are subjected to an array of substances and tools. They can have chemicals or cosmetic substances administered onto shaved skin, or by eye-drops, medicines and foods tested orally, even “lethal dose” tests. Some long-term tests take weeks or months in order to monitor for the development of illness or cancer. Additionally, tests can be extreme and cause permanent physical damage to the animals. These are only a few situations that occur, and at the end of some tests, surviving animals may be killed anyway.

Animal tests do have their limitations. Results are not always the same for animals as they are for humans, or even between other animal species. Artificially replicated diseases on animals are never the same as naturally occurring in humans. Cancer has been cured in mice, but could not be replicated for human use. A HIV/AIDS vaccine was able to be created for nonhuman primate studies, but that could not translate across to the human species. With this knowledge it is likely that an alternative for testing would be desirable to further medical research.

Non-animal research has proven to be more accurate for human responses than its counterpart. With the use of human volunteers, human cells and tissues, and advanced computer models, useful and accurate results are able to be obtained without the use of animals. In the case of other categories of testing like cosmetics and food, companies could make the choice to research and use products that have already been deemed as safe. There are thousands of products that have been made using ingredients that do not need testing. The companies could also choose to switch to non-human testing methods for new ingredients they are trying to use in their products. These methods are definitely more efficient at gauging human response, and they are more cost effective as well.

There is a cruelty-free campaign for cosmetics and personal products already in the United States and Internationally. The Humane Society in the United States is working on passing a federal law called the “Humane Cosmetics Act”. This would ban animal testing for cosmetics, and ban the sale of any animal-tested products. As of November 2021, eight states have passed laws that ban animal-testing for cosmetics.

Links for information:

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

https://aldf.org/article/federal-laws-and-agencies-involved-with-animal-testing/

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/cosmetics-testing-faq

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