Dear Next president,

Animal testing is a big problem and should be stopped. Animal testing is brutal and savage. Innocent animals are being subjected to forced feeding, inhaling toxins, going long periods of time without water or food, getting burned to see how the wound heals up, and much more. One example is called the ¨Draize Eye test.¨ This is used to test the irritations caused by shampoos and other products. This involves rabbits being put into stocks with their eyelids held open with clips, sometimes for many days at a time.

Some people say there is no other way to test on a whole body system. They also say that animals are good test subjects because they are similar to us. They are wrong because animals are very different from us. Something could pass animal testing and get released to the public and it could still be dangerous to us. Animal testing will create very poor results. My solution is to study cell cultures in a petri dish. We can use human cells for this. This will create more accurate results than animal testing.

It is wrong to use animals for testing. It is very cruel to them, Next President. Countless animals die because of animal testing. Animals can suffer like us, too, when they're being used as a test subject. The number of animals that have suffered pain during an experiment in 2010 are: 1,395 primates, 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters, according to the US. Department of Agriculture.

Animal testing is more expensive than other testing methods and a waste of government research money. An "unscheduled DNA synthesis" animal test costs $32,000 while an alternative test costs $11,000. A two-species lifetime cancer study can cost two million to four million dollars. The US National Institute of Health spends fourteen billion of the 31 billion of their annual budget on animal research.

Drugs that pass animal testing are not exactly safe. A drug could get tested and then released to the public and we could still get sick or die because we are so different from the animal that drug was tested on. In the 1950's there was a drug called Thalidomide that was tested on animals. It passed animal testing and was released. This drug caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities.

Animals are getting abused with animal testing. It´s just not right to make animals test products and drugs. Countless animals die every year because of animal testing. I believe animal testing should be stopped. The solution is studying cell cultures in a petri dish. This will give us reliable results without killing innocent animals. This is why animal testing should be abolished. So, Next President, what are you going to do about this?

Sincerely,

Jeff,

7th Grade

Evart MIddle School

Evart Michigan