Dear next president,

I am writing you today to bring your attention to an issue that needs your immediate focus. Animals continue to be used for the safety of products, where this practice protects human lives it puts the lives of the innocent animals at risk.

The issue of animal testing is that is causes pain and suffering to animals and other methods exist that can help test products and research medical advancements. I believe this kind of experimentation is inhumane and animals are very different from humans making poor test subjects. Some people think that testing is necessary to get medical advancements while others think it is wrong because an animal suffers or dies during the process. If we do testing to make our lives safer, why do we put animals lives at risk?

Animals that are tested on suffer, they may even experience mutations and die. Everyday products for medical or cosmetic research is tested on animals. Some people in this nation see how animal testing is cruel for in a 2008 poll 38% thought of animal testing as morally wrong. This percentage of people see the idea behind the suffering the animals go through. The pain intentionally put on animals to help humans be safe. These people are the ones daring enough to ask about the safety. The unnecessary pain is a problem that needs to be solved for animals. Even though it's not intended for them to suffer, they go through this pain from being held “in sterile, isolated cages, forced to suffer disease and injury, or euthanised at the end of the study.” The condition animals are in is inhumane. Animals are dying from experimentation and it needs to be stopped. The death of animals all over the world is because of us, humans, trying to make medical advancements or have more cosmetics to cover our faces to have us feel younger longer. Imagine if the animals in these trials was your beloved pet. How would you feel having your pet die because of you?

Animals are built differently than humans, therefore testing on animals may not produce accurate and reliably results. For many years, animals have been used to conduct experiments to find medical advancements to help cure cancer for example, but what if doctors only use animals because of tradition. It has been proven that animals are not validated for testing of human products, and “the claim that animals are necessary for biomedical research is unsupported by the scientific literature.” Animals are built different than humans cellularly, anatomically and metabolically, therefore medicine experimented on animals may work for the animals but in the long run will fail in human trials. After all the research put into the product, being tested on the animals and in the long run failing just puts an animal through unnecessary suffering. Since animals have different effects to drugs than us, drugs that are approved from animal testing can do damage to us. Money is wasted on these tests and most end up failing, for instance one time in 2004 scientists have, “wasted more than $2 billion over the past decade on drugs that ‘failed in advanced human testing or, in a few instances, were forced off the market, because of liver toxicity problems.’” The experiments done on animals were a success in this case, and because of this they concluded the drug would work on humans. In the end, the drug failed. The testing of animals is a waste of time and does not provide accurate results for medical advancements.

Other methods exist that can be used to test products other than animals. Such as EpiSkin and using blood from human volunteers. Methods like these have been accepted by international regulatory authorities. The reason these methods aren’t widely known are because “the opinions of government regulators strongly influence the extent to which private companies use available alternatives instead of traditional animal tests.” Tests are out there that can help save animals and give more reliable results, yet the government decides not to use them. These tests should be used because unlike animal testing these methods are more humane and help both animals and humans in the end. An example of a method is “using blood from human volunteers to test for the presence of fever-causing contaminants in intravenous medicines can save hundreds of thousands of rabbits each year from traditional "pyrogen" tests.” If the government used this method, many animals, like rabbits, could be saved from the pain but on them. Using human blood can become an option for alternatives of animal testing. By doing this it can keep people healthy instead of having medicines fail from being tested on animals. Even though there are many different alternatives for animal experimentation, this was just one example. This proves that other methods are more useful than animal testing.

As our president, this issue should be taken seriously. Since the government is in control of using different tests, I believe you should take initiative by putting limits on animal testing. With all the information given on animal testing, I hope to see a change that starts decreasing the amounts of animal experiments done in the nation. An end to the experiments will lead to a larger leap of medical advancements and a leap to help gain rights for animals. Animal testing kills many animals and affects humans to making it inhumane and a poor method for testing products.

Citations:

Evans, Kim Masters. "Public opinion on the morality of medical testing on animals, 2001-08." Animal Rights. 2009 ed. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Information Plus Reference Series. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/StatisticsDetailsPage/StatisticsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Statistics&prodId=OVIC&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&view=statisticsDocDisplay&limiter=&displayGroups=&action=e&documentId=GALE%7CEJ2210099193&windowstate=normal&source=Bookmark&u=lom_accessmich&jsid=727f45f6b443c570bee086700c605b8a

"Results from Research on Animals Are Not Valid When Applied to Humans." Scientific Research. Ed. Sylvia Engdahl. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2015. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Problems with Animal Research." www.aavs.org. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&dviSelectedPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010948221&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=lom_accessmich&jsid=6eb9668f97c497ec5fe1c907621d8b05

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/cosmetic_testing/facts/alternatives_animal_tests.html