ANIMAL TESTING

Dear future President, did you know: According to PETA each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Because of animal testing, some animals are being infected with diseases that they would NEVER have gotten. We need to change the ways we test products.

In 2015 according to cbs news the use of animals in experiments at leading federally-funded labs has increased nearly 73 percent in the past 15 years. The study, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, found the number of animals tested rose from 1,566,994 in 1997 to 2,705,772 in 2012 in testing by the top 25 institutional recipients of National Institute of Health grants. This should not happen especially since technology is advancing.

The benefits of non-animal testing. Alternative scientific tests are often more reliable than animal tests. For example, experiments on rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, monkeys, and baboons revealed no link between glass fibers and cancer. Only after human studies related the two did the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) label these fibers as carcinogenic. EpiDerm, an in vitro test derived from cultured human skin cells, was found to be more accurate in identifying chemical skin irritants than traditional animal tests. In comparison studies, EpiDerm correctly detected all of the test chemicals that irritate human skin, while tests on rabbits misclassified 10 out of 25 test chemicals—a full 40% error rate.

There are other ways to test products rather than testing on animals. Some alternatives to the use of animals in testing include “in vitro” (test tube) test methods and models based on human cell and tissue cultures, computerized patient-drug databases and virtual drug trials, computer models and simulations, stem cell and genetic testing methods, non-invasive imaging techniques such as MRIs and CT Scans, and microdosing (in which humans are given very low quantities of a drug to test the effects on the body on the cellular level, without affecting the whole body system.) This is a list of only a few different alternatives. If there are so many alternatives then why do we still test on animals? So future president I need your help to make animal testing illegal.

On a final note, animal testing is a cruel and unnecessary act that humans have put into effect. You as the future president have the power to make animal testing illegal and make an impact is everyone’s lives. Europe, for example, has banned the sale of cosmetics with ingredients tested on animals. Remember if you make animal testing illegal, it will impact human and animal lives. You can save 100 million animals a year if you make animal testing illegal.

Sincerely, Christina B.