How I Feel About Animal Testing

     How I feel about animal testing? I'm not really sure myself. I mean yes we need animal testing to see if medication actually works to save more animal and human lives. But it's also sad to know that they might die. Nobody likes to hear that an animal has died. It's just sad to hear, animal lover or not. They are innocent creatures, they don't wake up everyday knowing what they are going to encounter in the testing room. When animals are used in medical tests they are likely to suffer pain, illness, and quite often death. I know if I was an animal I would be scared out of my mind.
     Animals suffer from it immensely, plus with modern tecniques it is completely unnecessary. Animal testing is not just giving a mouse a pill and see what it does, it is so much more than that. They break their legs, burn them, cut them open while they’re still alive without any form of anesthesia, poison them, remove half their brains, spray stuff in their eyes and so on. And it’s not just mice and rats that have to suffer from the tests. Most people don’t know that cats, dogs, horses, pigs, guinnea pigs, rabbits and even monkeys are used for animal testing.
     Besides the cruelty that comes along with it, there are more reasons why animal testing is a bad thing. For example: it is useless because we are not rabbits. An animal has a totally different DNA than a human and therefore you can’t rely on the results. Bypass surgery is completely “safe” on humans, but they never succeeded in performing bypass surgery on dogs. Paracetamol is a very common and safe medicine to fight a headache, but it would kill a cat, goat or horse.
     A lot of people believe that modern alternatives are much more expensive than animal testing because that’s what the pharmaceutical industry keeps telling them. It indeed costs quite an amount of money to switch from old techniques to new ones, but eventually it will be worth it. It is a one time investment, while with animal testing, you have to keep paying for it. Animals need to be bred, they need food, shelter and of course let’s not forget the transportation costs. So despite what the industry claims, animal testing is more expensive than the use of modern techniques!
     I understand that medicine needs to be tested somehow before it can be used on humans, but with modern tecniques it is useless to use animals for that. They now can sort of clone an organ and safely test on that. That way, no one gets hurt, plus eventually, it doesn’t cost as much as animal testing. But I believe you can find better ways for finding cures by using medicines on something else besides animals.