Effects of Using Animals to Test Substances - Term Paper Example

Effects of Using Animals to Test Products and Why I Oppose It This practice of using animals to test products is referred to as vivisection and can be defined as an activity of doing scientific or medical experiments on live animals. It is one of the worst forms of animal legal abuse in the society. Vivisection can be done in various ways, among them being; administration of drugs, poisoning in order to test the level of toxins in a given product ,maiming, infecting with diseases, among other painful and invasive procedures. These experiments involving animals are conducted in a wide range of environments, for instance; universities, hospitals, research institutes, laboratories that are independent and conduct research for corporations, also agricultural facilities (Robinson 2002). These animals being helpless, they are not able to defend themselves in whichever way there could be. The animals mostly used for this practice are: dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, sheep, monkeys, chimpanzees, among others. These animals are kept in laboratories as prisoners for their entire life with uncomfortable, agonizing and deadly experiences when undergoing the experiments. This essay will focus on the effects of using these animals to test products and the reasons why there actually is no need of using them to conduct the experiments. The protocols involved in the testing performed on these animals inflicts a lot of pain on them, also severe suffering. The experiments include everything from testing new drugs to infecting the animals with diseases, burning of their skin, causing brain damage, maiming, blinding, implanting electrodes into the brain and other procedures that are very painful and invasive. There is a lot of severe suffering that come along with this malicious practice such as; long term social isolation as a result of being placed in labs to spend their entire life there, electric shocks during experimentation, repeated breeding and separation of infants from them, also withholding of food and water, which is a very inhuman thing to do to any living thing. In testing of toxins for instance, the animals involved are expected to receive the test substance on daily basis, weekly and up to a period of two years without recovery periods, causing some animals to succumb before the end of the period intended for the study. Some animals are also killed after the end of the study if they proved to be strong enough and survived the research, apart from chimpanzees. Animals here are also restrained to prevent their free movement by use of restraining devices, by immobilizing specific parts of the animal’s body like the head and neck or still immobilize the whole body of the animal (Greer, Goodman and Pleus 2012). Stress experiments on rats and mice includes their immobilization in tubes, forcing them to swim in order to avoid drowning, shocking their feet and painfully suspending them by their tails, which scientists claim to be of relevance to human anxiety and depression. Procedures like anesthetization, euthanasia and intubation when performed in a wrong way equally subject an animal to extreme pain and discomfort and therefore require excessive training and skills. When these procedures are used, vital signs to make sure that the animal is adequately anesthetized are to be monitored failure to which the animal will undergo extreme pain but with inability to move. Such unfortunate occurrences have come by as a result of insensitivity and lack of proper training and experience in the laboratory personnel that is required to avoid unnecessary suffering, following the practice. Genetic engineering and organ transplant has also proved to be creating much suffering and death for animals in an attempt to create animals with specific traits. The death of these animals mostly occurs while these animals are suffering from abnormalities and other diseased conditions. There also is severe stress from day to day laboratory life as the animals spend their entire lives in barren cages with the inability to make their choices and express natural behavior, no fresh air and or exposure to sunshine too. Rotation facilities in these animal cages are common giving the animals an opportunity to have a feel of the outside environment, though limitedly. The stress and chronic inflammatory conditions among these animals is brought about by their continuous time spent indoors in those substandard cages that are crowded, full of loud noise and lack of enrichment. Studies have shown that mice become more stressed on seeing other mice undergoing distress while the long term stress of living in labs and being used in research and testing among the chimpanzees results in chronic psychological distress, which can equally be seen in monkeys as they bite open wounds, mutilate themselves and rip out their hair as a result of the chronic psychological distress that they have to endure. Besides their forced participation in the dreaded protocols, their day to day existence in the laboratories is enough traumas for them to handle, as they are usually bored, with fear of the procedures they are to undergo and emotional stress for the rest of their lives. The economic costs for vivisection are quite high though huge profits are drawn from this same industry. Being a multibillion dollar industry it has been very difficult to curb vivisection and being that the industry has been so much defended, even with a clear picture of it hindering the battle against human diseases. A leading mammalian research center-The Jackson Laboratory for instance, sold 2.9 million mice with a profit of 98.7 million dollars being accrued. Investing in such a procurement can therefore be quite a lucrative enterprise for those who are animal importers, breeders, feed producers and drug companies, just to mention a few. With the purchase and maintenance of these animals in laboratories being expensive to deal with, the most used research animals are rats and birds as they are inexpensive to buy and maintain, easier to manage and disposable without much of whining and concern from the public. The economic downside to animal research has in a direct manner affected the public health of people and environmental safety. The ‘DakDak’ test for instance can provide data for five to six products at less than half the cost of testing an animal product while the rodent bioassay takes up to a period of five years at more than four million dollars per substance to determine the carcinogenetic of a chemical (Lawton 1997). The time and money is therefore an issue here. I oppose this practice because I believe that there are other ways of testing products which have been tried and succeeded without having to involve animals. The success in medical advances has been experienced like in the cause and cure of scurvy, done of human objects with scurvy. The invention of the first vaccine was equally done without animal experimentation in the 18th century, when people got inoculated with cowpox to build up their resistance to small pox. Penicillin was also discovered without animal research, Heimlich maneuver too and has managed to save countless lives. Important medical discoveries therefore cannot only be made through vivisection but studying human population which could be in terms of getting to know the connection between heart disease and cholesterol, also smoking and cancer. This therefore is an indicator that putting an end to vivisection will actually not impact on the medical process by ending it as the non-animal research will keep on. Redirection of resources that go into animal research towards the non-animal research would still translate in medical progress as in the case of human cell and tissue cultures, epidemiological studies and ethical human experimentation with fully informed consent. Animals are sentient beings with their own life’s interests, freedom and a right to life. In as much as we as human beings value our lives animals equally do and that is why they tend to protect themselves from danger whenever they can because according to them, their lives have some value attached. Whether anesthetized before use for experiments to cut on pain or not, the whole practice is still against animal rights as they are to be free from experiments, imprisonment and killing. Their bodies are also unique when it comes to the cellular level where a disease occurs. Most of their central nervous systems might be similar to ours but it is never the case when it comes to some of their systems like; the cardiovascular, that differs greatly from that of human beings. Human beings and animals do not also react to a stimulus in a similar manner, so it is illogical utilizing animals for experiments. Human diseases are also known to occur within the complex structure of the human body where there exists interaction between variables such as; genetic and environmental influences, stress, among others thereby resulting in a particular disorder. As human diseases do not occur naturally to animals, the disease is induced in these animals in the laboratories and ends up providing inaccurate data as experimental results cannot accurately predict naturally occurring diseases in humans. In conclusion, I would like to say that vivisection is quite an evil act done to animals and those involved should have human feelings and therefore save these animals of the pain and torture they undergo in the name of making advances in the medical field. From the discussion above, we have been able to have a feel of what these animals go through in such laboratory operations with some even dying due to the severe pain, others being psychologically affected as translated in their actions. Restraining these animals in labs, burning their skin, shocking their feet among others are what animals go through in laboratories. The medical personnel involved should also be well trained so that the instances of deaths among these animals are reduced a great deal. The best way to however help with this is through using the non-animal research ways of making medical advancements. If only we were able to relate with what these animals go through, the world would be a better place for these animals to live. Works Cited Read More