Imagine being forced into a position of torture, your hands and feet tied together while you are struggling to be freed from these bounds. While you’re struggling you are cowering in fear for your life trapped in a cage. Inside the cage people are injecting you with foreign and strange substances. Now your body is convulsing a few minutes later as the chemicals make their way into the bloodstream. Death seems like the best option in this position, but knowing the testers they will push your limit until you can almost see the bright light at the corner of the cage. This is just one day of torture until the next day comes because the pain never stops in this cage of horror.

Now imagine having the lack of ability or choice to escape that situation. This is what animal testing consists of. Living animals undergo pain and suffering due to testing procedures performed on them. One of the purposes for animal testing is to evaluate the safety of consumer goods such as cosmetic products. From these experiments, animals must endure physical harm and may also result in death. Animal testing should not be used for commercial products because it not only causes harm for the animals but can essentially be harmful to humans due to unreliable tests results.

Just like any debate there are always opposing opinions. For this particular topic, one may argue animals used in experiments are protected by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) which was created to protect animals from mistreatment during testing (“Animal Testing” 2). Although this may be true, many people do not know that 80% of the animals used for testing are mice, rats and birds, which are not protected by the AWA. Animals experience cruel procedures such as “chemicals being dripped into their eyes, and injected into their bodies.” Animals are addicted to drugs and as a result of these methods the animals are blinded, deafened, burned or infected with diseases (“Lab Animal Testing” 1). In order to perform these procedures on the animals, restraining devices are used to prevent movements of animals. Some experiments call for immobilization of an animal’s entire body lasting up to a month (“Harm and Suffering” 1). These animals are lucky if they survive the process.

Pain, suffering, misery, isolation, is just some of the emotions that animals feel while being tested on in laboratories. The pain inflicted on animals is completely barbaric. The laws the U.S. law allows is savage when it comes to animal testing. It allows animals to be “burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged” (Alternatives” 1). If these methods were inflicted on human testing there would be many riots and battles over it, so what makes it okay to allow these horrible things to be inflicted on animals? The animals suffer through these experiments and have no ability to stop it. The animals aren’t allowed to have pain killers so they feel the pain and have no relief. As if that wasn’t bad enough animals are “purposefully blinded…seizures are inflicted…spines are crushed…tumors are grown” (“Alternatives” 1). The scientists make animals go through changes they wouldn’t go through naturally just to see what their reaction is to chemicals. They also perform surgeries on primates and injects them with strange chemicals that they would have never encountered in their normal lives. That and much more is inflicted upon them, and at the end of the day they are forced back into their cages and await trials of similar or more horrifying things the following day.

Others may also argue that animals are similar to humans, therefore making them appropriate test subjects. This is in fact a false statement because animals and humans are different in many ways. Humans have a longer lifespan, process substances differently, and are exposed to different environmental factors. While it is true that humans and animals share the same genes, it is the ways genes are expressed that play the big difference between the two (“Animals in Testing” 1). Therefore, animal models fail to be an accurate representation of what may occur in humans. In addition, drugs that pass tests on animals may not be necessarily safe for human usage. It cannot be 100 percent guaranteed the product is safe for humans unless it is tested on a human. It is also commonly believed that animal testing may be the best method there is to assess the safety of products. This is not so because there are new methods such as the “in vitro” and the “in silico” which can replace animal testing.
Animal testing isn’t always accurate information when it comes to how a human may respond to the product. We as humans have a different anatomy compared to various animals and respond differently to different chemicals. Animal testing is inaccurate and Dr. Elias Zerhouni agrees, he says, “[animal testing] hasn’t worked…we need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans” (“Cruelty to Animals” 1). He is completely correct because animal testing isn’t working when it comes to the result of things. There are many different types of testing that can be done that will have a better end result and not hurt animals. An example of this type of testing is the “in vitro” methods which uses human cells and tissues to find out how we will react to things. Another method is the “in silico” modeling which uses computers that simulate the human biology. Using either of these methods comes up with a more accurate result, there is no animal cruelty involved, and using either/both of these methods saves companies tons of money.

A big issue in animal testing is unreliable results. Animals differ from humans in their organ structure, and chemical or drug absorption (“Limitations and Dangers” 1). These differences can cause inaccurate results. Since animals respond differently to chemicals than humans, inadequate information may occur when animal data is used to test products. For an example, the eye and skin irritation/ corrosion tests provide different results. Test subjects such as a rabbit have different eye structures from humans, anatomically and physiologically. Rabbits react to chemicals stronger than human eyes do which shows a clear hole in the validity of animal testing (“Product Testing” 1). A study from the “Multicenter Evaluation of In Vitro Cytotoxity” shows that tests were conducted for 50 chemicals and at best only 65% were predictive of human response (“Liberation BC” 3). Animal lives are wasted in laboratories only to produce results that are undependable. Not only is it cruel; it is also a potential risk to humans.
All in all animal testing must not be used for commercial products due to invalid results, and they’re being tortured. The results in animal testing aren’t always accurate so why even bother to continue the testing? There are many other methods that are just as adequate and if not better. If we get rid of animal cruelty then many animals will no longer be tortured, and many more of them would survive as a species and as an individual. Stopping commercial animal testing would also benefit companies because they would be able to save rather than spend more money. We need to put an end to this animal cruelty and suffering at once to help those poor defenseless creatures. No longer will they cower in fear for their lives in the cage, no longer will they be injected with foreign and strange substances, no longer will they be tested on.

Works Cited
“Alternatives to Animal Testing.” PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2015.
"ANIMALS IN SCIENCE." The Failure of the Animal Model. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Animal Testing | Liberation BC." Animal Testing | Liberation BC. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015.
"Animal Testing - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015.
“Cruelty to Animals in Laboratories.” PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2015.
"Harm and Suffering | Animal Use in Research." Harm and Suffering | Animal Use in Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Limitations and Dangers | Animal Use in Research." Limitations and Dangers | Animal Use in Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2015.
"Product Testing: Toxic and Tragic." PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015.
"The Cruelty of Lab Animal Testing." Down to Earth Organic and Natural. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015.