Pros And Cons Of Animal Testing

On the other hand, animal testing is cruel and inhumane. During animal research, animals are forced into extremely painful experiments. They are subjected to things such as force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, infliction of burns and wounds to study the healing process, and multiple others. One of these painful experiments is called The Draize eye test. The site Pro Con explains how this involves scientists clipping rabbits’ eyelids open in order to pour cosmetic products, such as shampoo, into the eyes of the animals (1). The clips prevent the rabbit from blinking the product away, sometimes for days at a time. Common symptoms include redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration,

This test involves finding out which dose of a chemical will kill 50% of the animals being used in the experiment. According to the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals, it is widely used to test the toxicity of household products, pesticides, cosmetics, drugs, weed killers and industrial products (1). Products are usually orally dosed using a tube inserted down the animal’s throat. The product is then pumped into the animal’s stomach and scientists wait 14 days to see if the animal survived the dosage or not. Other forms of dosing include forced breathing of the vapour, application of the substance to the animal’s skin, and injection of the product into the animal’s system. Common signs of poisoning include tears, diarrhoea, discharge and bleeding from the eyes or mouth, and convulsions (2). No pain relief is given to the animals throughout this long, painful process. If the test subject happens to survive the substance is judged to be less toxic and the corresponding commercial is informed to lower the hazard classification. The Draize eye test and the LD50 test are only two examples of the hundreds of immensely painful tests performed on animals. The US Department of Agriculture, USDA, reported in 2010 that 97,123 animals suffered pain during experiments while given no anesthesia for pain relief (1). This included 1,395 primates, 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters