More than 100 million animals including cats and dogs, are poisoned, burned, crippled, and abused in U.S. labs each year. No matter how cruel, redundant, or painful an experiment may be, none of them are illegal. Even when valid alternatives to animals are available, the law does not require that they be used. Also, ninety two percent of experimental drugs that are safe on animals fail in human clinical trials because they either do not work or are dangerous. Even though it is cruel to the animals, not always effective, and there are existing alternatives, animal testing is still used around the world every day, but is animal testing necessary? (peta.org)
What are animal rights? Animal rights are the protection of animals from cruelty through requirements of humane treatment. Laws protecting animal rights proscribe certain forms of brutal and merciless treatment of animals in medical and scientific research and in the handling of and slaughter of animals for human consumption (encyclopedia.com). Today there are thousands of activist groups around the world that focus on animal testing, animal cruelty, and the misuse of animals.
Animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, and Erasistratus, performed experiments on living animals to test products before applying them to human patients. Also, an Arab physician in twelfth century Moorish Spain, introduced animal testing as an experimental