Animal Testing Is Unnecessary

In this essay, I will analyse current and past animal testing in science and prove that it is a cruel and unnecessary means of research. Animal testing has been in practice under different names - from sacrifices to witchcraft to science - from at least 500BC. Still, animal testing exists and should be eradicated as it inflicts pain upon animals and without any significant benefit to science. Animals don’t deserve to be treated with such cruelty. With modern technology I, and I’m sure many other people, are wondering, why animals are still being tortured, murdered and imprisoned when the media and scientific community are continuously boasting about the newest breakthroughs and discoveries. There are numerous, inexpensive and cruelty-free

I argue animals ARE as important as us. Discrimination is extremely relevant in today’s society and contrary to many beliefs it is not just a problem between humans. Animals face discrimination just as we do. If you don’t believe animals are discriminated against consider how we give some animals - our pets - homes, food and our affection and others are sent to the slaughter house or squashed under our foot without a second thought. This is discrimination in its lesser known form. Take apes and mice as further examples; apes are said to be one of our closest relatives, as are mice. The main difference that we easily notice is that apes are similar to us by the gestures they use, their appearance and their size. Mice however, don’t use the same gestures as us, they are extremely different in appearance and are much smaller than humans. Humans have a tendency to speak of intelligence as if it has a certain criteria. Using this criteria, apes would be considered more intelligent than mice because they more closely resemble humans. Because of this, in most countries animal testing on apes is illegal but using mice in testing is entirely legal. But as philosopher Jeremy Bethan wrote, “The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?” No harm should be intentionally inflicted on another animal in the name

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

This contradiction reflects how hypocritical experimenters are towards animals. Many of us tend to place the value of an animal on how similar they are in physical appearance and how similar we see an animal to ourselves not by how they contribute to the Earth. Animals are keeping us alive this very second, we would cease to exist without them but they would flourish without us. There is no universal method of determining the value of a life and therefore it should not be used to defend the torture and murder of another species. A life is a life.

We are often in our lives faced with the trolley dilemma: if you had to choose would you kill one to save many? Now, some may compare this to animal testing justifying that, “millions of animals are killed now to save billions of people in the future.” However, this is not at all justified because unlike the trolley dilemma, we have not only a choice, but alternatives. There are many non-animal testing alternatives that have been developed which are less expensive and more