Dear Future President,

There are over millions of mice, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, and many other animals that are locked up in cages in laboratories waiting for painful experiments. Millions of these animals that are killed when being  tested on chemicals, drugs, and cosmetics. Animals have feelings too, they are not just things we can test on. Animal experiments are wasteful and unreliable, cruel and inhumane, and there are alternative testing methods rather than animal experimentation.

First of all, animal experiments are wasteful and unreliable. They are unreliable because if we are testing an animal on a drug, the animal potentially can have a different effect then another animal had. Humans may react totally differently to something then a animal would. According to Peta.org  “Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.” The results of a experiment has the capacity to differ from the animal that it is being tested on. I believe that it is also wasteful, due to the fact that we are just abusing animals for no reason. Every animal is different so I believe that testing on animals will is not always a reliable source.

Secondly, animal experimentation is cruel and inhumane. Each year, 26 million animals are used in the United States for scientific and commercial testing.  Some experiments can burn animals and give them major wounds. In some test, animals may be awake for the entire experiment and feel the full pain. According to Humane Society International, “Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation.” For example, the Draize eye test, is used by cosmetics companies to evaluate irritation caused by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks with their eyelids held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in 2010 that 97,123 animals suffered pain during experiments while being given no anesthesia for relief, including 1,395 primates, 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters. So many animals are suffering because of us. This is not right! It is so cruel to the animals. They still have feeling and we can not just abuse them and test on them. We are causing the sufferings of animals.

At last, there are alternative testing methods instead of animal experimentation. With today’s technology we could design robots to test on or we can study our cells in a petri dish. Scientist can study from blood cells and experiment with those. Volunteers could donate blood to be tested on. It is not necessary to test on animal skin. According to animal testing Procon.org, we can use human volunteers then from there the blood is then analyzed. “Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, is made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and can produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin.” If we tested on our own blood, then the results may even be better, using our own blood instead we do not have to abuse and kill animals. There are so many animals that could be saved a year if we did not test on them. Experiments could rather be done in test tubes as well. There are so many other strategies out there to experiment on than animals.

With this new information, I think that there are many ways that we could avoid using animals to test on. There are so many other solutions! If we are paying for experiments on animals with our taxes, then why don’t we put that money to come up with a new way to test chemicals, drugs, and cosmetics. We have so much technology that can help us. We can fix this problem so simply! Thank you for your consideration.