Dear Future President,

Each year in our nation, about 25 million animals are used in experiments such as, product testing, and commercial testing. According to NEAVS, otherwise known as New England Anti-Vivisection Society, the problem is that using animals in laboratories amounts to legally sanctioned animal abuse, which is extremely wrong. Animals in labs live stressful, repetitive, and unnatural lives of confinement and deprivation. An animal’s life in these facilities include everything from testing new drugs to being infected with diseases. It can include etiquette that could cause severe suffering in the animal's life, such as long term social isolation, withholding of food and water, and separation of infants from their mothers.

Atomic Bomb testing in Operation Desert Rock in Nevada between 1951 to 1957 is just like animal testing. However, during this era they were forcing thousands of people to be exposed to high levels of radiation just to test how an Atomic Bomb explosion could affect their bodies. As a result, many soldiers were suffering from radiation sickness, nausea, and cancer. Troops who had children were born with deformities. On the other hand, animals that are being used in labs are going through horrible protocols just like those troops in Desert Rock. The question is are you, our future president, going to do anything at all to help or leave these animals to suffer?

The United States is one of the two countries in the world whose government openly allows animal testing. According to the article Animal Testing and the Law by Animal Legal Defence Fund, there are approximately 12,000 facilities involved with research, exhibition, breeding, or dealing with animals. Most animals are not legally protected at all. For instance, experts from NEAVS explains how animals are really treated poorly in these facilities: “ In toxicity testing, animals used in chronic and carcinogenicity studies received the test substance daily, seven days a week up to two days a year with no recovery period. Many, if not most died before the end of the study.” These animals are not getting the life they deserve as in most of their studies they’d be immobilized for months, then either die during the study or just be killed at the very end.

Imagine being imprisoned your whole entire life. That is exactly what these animals lives are like, imprisoned in theses laboratories, being experimented on their entire life on this earth. Instead of using actual animals, there is a solution. According to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, you could replace animals with non-animal tests, “These modern methods include sophisticated tests using human cells and tissues (also known as in vitro methods), advanced computer-modeling techniques (often referred to as in silico models), and studies with human volunteers.”This would make testing cheaper because you are not using actual animals and it’d make it so you can test more chemicals in a faster way. The problem is that animal testing has been around for centuries, most labs do this new procedures, but a lot of these facilities still use animals because they don’t want a change.

Do you really know what happens behind those laboratory walls? What I’m implying is that it is very wrong for these animals to go through these levels of abuse. In agreement with the Food and Drug Administration, otherwise known as the FDA, and the pharmaceutical industry, animal testing with drugs used by humans is unreliable. This just shows that animal testing is wrong as well as useless if you can't rely on the outcomes you get on the animals to be the same for humans. It needs to end now! Would you really just let these animals keep suffering, or are you going to fix the problem of animal testing we have in the United States?