Animal Testing and It’s Disadvantages: Analytical Essay

A syringe forced down an animal’s throat, being suffocated in a room that’s being filled with toxic chemicals, or being injected with a disease. These are all examples of the horrible conditions that animals go through while being tested in labs. Animal testing can be conducted for varying products such as cosmetics, medicines, chemicals. Animals can also be injected with diseases and genetically modified. Testing on different species of animals always has varying outcomes, which makes it harder to get a definitive answer if the product is safe for humans or not. These animals undergo some serious abuse and this results in vast changes to their anatomy. Testing of cosmetics and medical supplies, chemicals and genetic modifications on animals should stop because all are unethical and ineffective.

The cosmetic industry is currently and has been flourishing for at least 100 years. With all of this fast-paced business, a lot of scandals having to do with animal testing are swept under the rug. To keep all of these scandals at bay, the Humane Cosmetics Act was introduced to Congress on March 5th of 2015, and passed. The act states, “Humane Cosmetics Act – Prohibits: (1) any entity from conducting or contracting for cosmetic animal testing in the United States, in or affecting interstate commerce, effective on the date that is one year after enactment of this Act; and (2) selling, offering for sale, or transporting in interstate commerce any cosmetic if the final product or any component was developed or manufactured using cosmetic animal testing conducted or contracted for after such date, effective three years after this Act’s enactment” (Moran). With passing the act, it and 30 other countries have passed similar laws that were created to protect animals from lab testing. The 30 countries that have passed laws such as the Humane Cosmetics Act collectively have 1.7 billion consumers that will be less likely to buy a product that has been tested on an animal (PR Newswire Europe). Due to the uproar in the cosmetics community being against animal testing, the hashtag #BeCrueltyFree was created by the Humane Society of the United States. One hundred and forty cosmetics companies have hopped on board with this movement by promoting their products, and seeming more appealing to customers by explaining how they make their products without the use of animal testing. Testing of animals is not limited to cosmetics testing. It can also be done to prove the safety of medicines for humans.

Medical testing on animals is amongst one of the most popular types of tests conducted on animals. They use this method to prevent harming human testors rather than a dog, cat, rat, guinea pig, or any other type of animal. There are many people trying to rid animal testing completely from any processes of testing medical products. A filmmaker in Vancouver, Canada named Gary Charbonneau made a film in 2019 called “Dying in Deceit”. In this film he revealed the use of animals in scientific testing of medicines for humans. He focused on the negative effects it caused on the animals, and the misleading information the studies on these animals lead to (Grauer). He made this film after hearing that in 2016, the University of British Columbia used more than 160,000 animals in 500 research projects and classes they had. He was heartbroken by this, and didn’t understand how they could treat hundreds of thousands of animals like this. Charbonneau received a large amount of backlash on his film. Gail Murphy, the vice president of UBC research and innovation responded by saying “Research involving animals at UBC is helping us to understand and come closer to treatments for devastating diseases and medical conditions that affect millions of Canadians,” (Grauer). Charbonneau responded by explaining that there are plenty of alternative ways to find if these medicines are safe for human consumption such as 3D printers, and microchips that contain artificial blood cells. He says “If you were interested to know about elephants, you don’t test on a cheetah,” he said. “Animal testing cannot be the answer.” (Grauer), challenging Murphy’s statement about the necessity of testing on animals. On top of animals having to go through some very tough times in the testing labs, genetical modifications brings the intensity to another level for the animals.

There are many ways to genetically modify animals, there is cloning, disease models, and gene editing. Cloning is the most popular technique of genetically modifying animals currently. It consists of taking cells from the parent, and replicating them to hold the desired traits in the cloned animal. There are thousands of cases where animals are genetically modified to either match consumer wants or to enhance their ability to perform. “During the development of the CCAC guidelines on: genetically- engineered animals used in science, some key ethical issues, including animal welfare concerns, were identified: 1) invasiveness of procedures; 2) large numbers of animals required; 3) unanticipated welfare concerns; and 4) how to establish ethical limits to genetic engineering…” (Ormandy). In 2003, Zebrafish were injected with jellyfish DNA to make them glow. They were named ‘Glowfish’ due to their iridescence inherited from the jellyfish. They became very popular, and many people started to buy them as pets. This caused an upheaval of ethical issues in California from consumers. California ended up being the only state to ban the Glofish, due to their ethical concerns about the treatment of the Zebrafish (Ormandy). Farm animals are the most susceptible to genetic modifications. Sheep and pigs will be genetically modified so they have a higher production level of hormones in their body, making it easier for them to reproduce. Animals may also be used as organ donors for humans. Just like single use plastic, they use the animals for their organs, and throw them away since the animals usually cannot live without the organ that is being taken from them. Organ transplants from animals to humans is one of the most controversial uses of animals in testing labs. Organs, tissue, or cells from the animals are used to make up for the lack of donors that the hospitals around the world have.

With such a controversial topic, many ethical issues have arised from genetically modifying animals. It is wasteful, expensive, and unnecessary. “Many of the embryos that undergo genetic engineering procedures do not survive, and of those that do survive only a small proportion (between 1% to 30%) carry the genetic alteration of interest” (Ormandy). It is shown that the majority of the animals that are used end up dying from the experiments they are put through. As well as being genetically modified, many animals can be used as human disease models. They are used to show the effects that the disease would cause on humans. This method is used to help the scientists that are trying to cure that disease. This is a very ineffective way to test these cures, since animals have a vastly different genetic make-up than us. Since their bodies work in different ways than ours do, it is an ineffective way to test out the cures. Even if the animal is fine after the cure is tested on them, that does not mean the cure will 100% work on humans with that disease (Ormandy). Since these animals are being injected with harmful diseases, it isn’t rare for the animal to die in the testing process. Disposing of these genetically modified animals is a huge struggle for the scientists who are conducting these experiments. Scientists have to put a lot of thought into where they will dispose of the animal’s body. If they were to throw them away in public dumpsters they are afraid other animals could get into the trash, ingest the animal at its unnatural state, and negatively be affected by it. If an animal got into the trash and ate the disease ridden animal, it could contract that disease, and begin to spread the disease among its species. Genetically modifying animals is a very unsafe and unnecessary way of testing on animals. Chemicals are commonly tested on animals as well, which is a very harmful and useless procedure too.

Using animals to test chemicals and its toxicity rate is an extremely dangerous and abusive way to test these chemicals. The variety of animals that are involved are susceptible to negative lifelong effects or even death after the testing is done. Toxicity test is testing done on animals to find out if the chemical they are testing could cause harm to humans or the environment. “Toxicity testing can vary in duration from four hours to several days or months to animals’ entire life spans. The animals are observed for toxic effects, including vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, respiratory distress, appetite or weight loss, rashes, salivation, paralysis, lethargy, bleeding, organ abnormalities, tumors, and, ultimately, death…” (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). During the process of testing, the tester exposes these animals to the chemicals, but 100-10,000 times higher than what the normal amount a human would come in contact with. Due to the upcharge in the amount of chemicals they expose the animals to, it is very difficult to interpret what types of effects the chemicals could cause on a human. Testing these chemicals on animals is also very time consuming and expensive. It could cost up to 6 million dollars to complete a full test on an animal (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine).

The lasting effects on the tester animals can be life threatening. The testing can include the animal being placed in a room that is filled with chemicals, being tied down to be injected with a trial substance, having a tube or syringe shoved down their throat to ensure the substance they are testing reaches the animals stomach (Humane Society International). Almost every new chemical that is passed has at one time been forced into an animal’s digestive system to be digested to see if the chemical is harmful or not. The testing processes can be done in bulk by as much as thousands at a time, or can be tested on soley one animal. This results in 10,000 animals being killed for each pesticide or chemical that is tested on animals.“HSI works through intergovernmental bodies such as the OECD to accelerate global adoption of modern non-animal testing methods, and through our network of country offices to have these new approaches taken up through national regulations” (Humane Society International). There are many alternative options to test things such as cosmetics, medical treatments, genetical modifications, and chemicals rather than using innocent animals. Using these alternative methods will reduce the amount of unnecessary animal harm, and deaths in total. Animals everyday go through such hardships, and can even live their entire lives in a lab being poked and prodded at by people who do not value their well-being or life as a whole.

Animal testing is the worst way to conduct any type of testing. It is unreliable, unethical and very costly. There are thousands of products that animals can be tested on. Some of these include cosmetics, medicines, and chemicals. Some studies have also been done when an animal is injected with a disease or genetically modified. The animals in the testing facilities deal with very tough conditions. The animals that are used in testing labs have incredibly bad lives. They have to go through things such as having chemicals forced down their throat, being locked in a room full of chemicals, or even being injected with varying diseases.