Dear President,

           There are many issues in the world, but I feel as if the biggest issue is animal testing. Innocent animals are tested from many things each day and it is so cruel that it ends up killing them. These animals suffer pain during experiments while being given no anesthesia. The many types of animals include, primates, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, mice, and cats. It is said that 95% of animals that are being used for these experiments are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act. The AWA covered 1,134,693 animals used for testing in the fiscal year of 2010, which leaves 25 million animals that are not covered. One experiment used is the LD50 test which involves finding out which dose of a chemical will kill 50%  of animals being used in the experiment. That test made 97,123 animals suffer in 2010. Another test used in the Draize eye test, used by cosmetic companies to evaluate irritation  caused by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks with their eyes held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested. Drugs that end up passing the animal tests, are not necessarily safe. In the 1950s, sleeping pills caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities. Later, test on pregnant mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats and hamsters did not results in birth defects unless the drug was administered at extremely high doses. Some chemicals that are harmful to animals prove valuable when used by humans. Animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects. 94% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials. Over 100 stroke drugs that were effective when tested on animals have failed in humans and over 85 HIV vaccines failed in humans after working well in non-human primates. Animals can suffer like humans do, so it is speciesism to experiment on them while we refrain from experimenting on humans.  Discriminating against animals because they do not have the cognitive ability, language, or moral judgement that humans do is no more justifiable than discriminating against human beings with severe mental impairments. Animal testing needs to be put to a stop because it sometimes does not work for humans and they are just hurting or killing animals for no reason at all.

Sincerely,

Ashtyn Pendell