Animal Testing: pass or fail?

“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: ‘Because animals are like us.’

“Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ‘Because the animals are not like us.’

“Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”

—Prof. Charles R. Magel

Why do we accept that some of the most sadistic things are done to animals in the name of science?

Are we, as a human species so blindly superstitious, that we still believe in “sympathetic (or hunting) magic” like our cave people ancestors did, back inn the day, when they draw art on the walls of the animals. Modern theory suggests when this was teamed up with dancing and chanting while wearing skins and antlers of slain animal would bring good luck in the hunt. By imitation they animals in the hunt they would recreate the expected results of the hunt.

How little we have progressed as a species since the days of Paleolithic cave art. For this hunting rituals magic has long since been discredited for lack of evidence. We know better, or we should.

Yet we continue to conduct all variety of experiments on animals, from emotional (separating animals from their families), stimulus deprivation, to cutting their brains open and inserting electrodes in, to testing medication, cosmetics, floor cleaners and many other useless products we have no use for. Vivesection shows how hollow our claims for being an advanced civilisation are.

Not only are we testing consumer products which are “new and improved” and require testing by law, these products are often no better and even worse than the old products they are replacing. The medications are giving inaccurate results, making the testing not merely cruel but pointlessly cruel.

The British Medical Journal has said that animal studies are of limited usefulness to human health because they are of poor quality and their results often conflict with human trials
(BMJ-British Medical Journal (2006, December 18). Just How Useful Are Animal Studies To Human Health?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August)

There are also fundamental flaws in the way the tests are conducted, producing results which are unusable in any scientific way, even if the testing was as necessary as these vivisectors claim.

And, if these test were conducted at even a basic level required to achieve usable date, (which they are not), they are producing results that reflect how chemicals or conditions affect animals, and only those animals that are being tested. Testing doesn’t reflect how it affect animals in real world conditions. So these tests are useless even in for producing animal results, without trying to apply it to humans. (http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/animal_testing.shtml)

On top of all this there is no guarentee of how these chemicals and products will affect humans, making the results of this deliberate cruelty, irrelevant.

As this article points out, Five out of six new prescription drugs don’t work, doctor claims, and they offer “few if any new benefits” to patients. Yet Big Pharma push these new wonder drugs, government regulatory agencies pass these drugs, in order to keep the profits rolling in. New and Improved, is really just Cruel and Horrific. These drugs are useless, and may actually be harmful, but the animals are tortured anyway, with no benefit to human health, which is the raison d’être “scientists” give us for this experimentation.

So, there are poorly designed tests, inaccurately carried out, producing irrelevant data, from cruel and useless tests on animals that have no clear correlation between how these products will affect humans, and after that, they still have to run human trials. Often the human trials are conducted at the same time, regardless of animal testing.

And in cases where animal testing has produced negative results, the companies can ignore it and proceed to human trials regardless. Such as with Proctor & Gambles testing of Olestra a fat substitute on mice and rats. These test shows that mice and rats developed liver tumors, and P&G decided to ignore these findings are rats and mice are different to humans.

Proctor & Gamble, the worlds largest producer of consumer goods, when we buy their products we are telling them that we agree with their testing policy. P&G has been the subject of many boycott attempt from consumers (for a full list of their products, their site provides a handy list of P&G products (US brands) ethical consumers and those who oppose animal testing may like to avoid

and why boycott proctor & gamble

P&G admit that guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, rats and mice are among the animals used in their ‘product safety research’, as well as cats and dogs in pet food experiments.
Source: uncaged: protecting animals

As long as a company is making money, and P&G is making billions of dollars annually, they do not have the consumers health as their number one consideration. In fact, corporation law requires them not to, the law corporations to put profits for shareholders before all else.

The testing of our food on animals must give people cause for concern about what we eat. Food that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years gets adulterated in the labs and this raises safety issues for consumers.

As Kate Hood MDAA and Isabelle Quinn, authors of Vegan Bootcamp (Redcliff publishing, 2005) state “Testing (for any reason, other than taste) is done to find out how much of a chemical they can that add before it it will kill you. In other words, how much can they get away with, before your family launches lawsuits on your behalf. … If food needs to be tested to pass product safety tests, your body doesn’t need it. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, your body doesn’t need it. If it is produced in a lab and not grown in the ground, your body doesn’t need it.”

There is a saying which reminds us why we must oppose this at every opportunity. If anyone knows who said this first, I would be happy to attribute it.

Animal experimenters inflict so much torture on dogs in order to induce heart disease. A disease that dogs, being meat eaters, do not get naturally. Once they have heart disease “scientists” test drugs that will be used on humans who have heart disease. Often as a result of eating animal products in the first place.

While people are continuing to receive grants to conduct these experiments, it is more profitable for them to torture rather than to show compassion, logic, reasoning and common sense.

The things we do to animals, because we can, is shameful.
Feedback welcome.