Dear Next President,

We live in one of the most advanced and progressive countries in the world, so why do we continue a practice that is so vicious. Animal testing should be banned in cosmetics and greatly reduced in medical studies because it is inhumane, not usually effective on humans and there are alternatives to it that don't torture innocent beings.

Animal testing has proven to be inhumane time and time again by procedures such as vivisection, which is surgery performed on live animals, during these procedures the animals are supposed to have anesthesia but often times the lab workers are not properly qualified and they don't give the correct amount of anesthesia causing great pain on these animals. The Co-Founder of Mayo Clinic, Dr. Charles Mayo even said, “I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.” According to NEAVS, sometimes tests involve the animal being fully or partially paralyzed for what can last up to months. The drugs that are being tested on these animals are often extremely dangerous and they usually end up burning, mutilating and even killing them. What's even worse is that their deaths tend to be long and tortuous, at times lasting days.

Another reason that animal testing should not be used is that drugs have a different effect on animals than they do on humans. This difference can actually delay the discovery of more medicines because some scientists assume that if a drug is poisonous to an animal it will be poisonous to a human too, that is really not the case. According to American Anti Vivisection Society (AAVS), examples of this are in cats acetaminophen is poisonous, but in humans it's therapeutic; in guinea pigs penicillin is toxic, but in humans its effective, and morphine makes cats hyper excited but calms humans (AAVS). Even the secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said, “Nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” We can not continue to

Another reason animal testing shouldn't be used is that it is extremely expensive! In 2004, Pfizer reported that they had wasted over $2 billion have been wasted on ineffective animal tests. Money should be spent on alternative studies that significantly reduce the amount of animals tested on. These alternatives include tests on human and animal cells which reduces the amount of animals used. Also “microdosing” is a procedure where consenting humans are given micro amounts of drugs that are being tested. It is a small enough amount of drug so that it can't affect your entire body but you can still see the effect it has on the patient. There are computer models and simulations that can predict the outcome of an experiment. In-vitro is also used that is where they take animal cells or tissues to do the tests on, this reduces the amount of animals used.

Although I understand that animal testing can be beneficial in some situations, it should only be used in valid scientific research that has a large chance of working after using all the available alternative forms. In conclusion I believe that animal testing should be banned in cosmetics and greatly reduced in medical studies because it is inhumane, not usually effective on humans and there are alternatives to it that don't torture innocent beings.

Sincerely,

Beria Haugen