Should Cosmetic Animal Testing Be Banned

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Cosmetic research that involves animals has no impact on changing anything for the better. Why would we harm animals for the simple want to test our many lotions and perfumes? Cosmetic animal testing should be banned because it does not improve human life or lead to any medical breakthroughs. Animals are used to test many different substances or products either medical or cosmetic. The most common cosmetic tests are for eye irritability and skin irritation. Others include prevention of harm to the reproduction system or metabolism. Many animals are used to administer or apply the testing substance. Mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits are most familiar. However, other studies have used dogs, pigs, birds, cats, monkeys or hamsters. …show more content…

One alternative is Episkin. Episkin is a rubber like material that resembles human skin and its irritability. Sometimes animal skin can vary from a human’s and gives false results(Merali paragraph 1). Episkin is also able to help test different skin types/colors. The major need for this is testing sunscreen on different shades of skin. Another alternative is virtual computerized tests. As Celeste Biever says,“Software models of animal and human organs are emerging and could potentially replace 50 to 100 millions or animals used each year for scientific research.” For medical testing animals will always need to be used used so that we can make medical advances and save people’s lives. However this could mean change for the cosmetic world as new alternatives are being discovered. Lastly, microdosing can be used. Microdosing is giving small amounts of drugs to evaluate the reactions that happen. Due to the low doses there should not be any harm. Side effects are minimized yet still able to be studied. Through these devices we can start decreasing animal testing for cosmetics and eventually make it

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