Animal Testing

Animal testing on a rabbit.

Watch A Teddy Bear Tackles the Trauma of Animal Tests in New Video

A teddy bear tackles the trauma of animal tests in the video.

Overview

Millions of animals have or are experiencing the cruelty of being tested upon, many for the products we use every day.

About

For every new chemical invented to be put into a product, it is forced into several animals (using oral force feeding, breathing in sickening vapors for hours, and etc.) before it became as we see it. The animals are forced to suffer without pain relief or medication.

It has many officially recognised uses in science. Sometimes it is done to help fight illness, to make\defeat bio-weapons, to prove make-up is not toxic or to test the toxicity of new pesticides.

Politics and Alternatives

There’s no “humane” way to poison animals with chemicals or to infect them with deadly diseases like rabies to test the effectiveness of a vaccine. However, there are modern non-animal alternatives that work just as well or better. Now, in Brazil and South Korea, “mandatory alternatives” are required when companies test a product.

Statistics

• 10,000 animals are killed for every new pesticide chemical tested.
• An estimated 26m animals were used during 2020 in the United States alone for both scientific and commercial testing.
• 32 beagles in government-required tests for each new drug or agrochemical.
• 100% agreement required between countries to eliminate a single animal test.

The DNA factor

The amount of the DNA sequence that is an exact match for the human DNA sequence.

1. Between other individual humans= 99.9%
2. The Neanderthals= 99.7%
3. Chimps= 98.8%
4. Gorilla= 98.4%
5. Pig= 98%
6. Orangutan= 96.9%
7. Cat= 90%
8. Mouse= 85% or 98.8%
9. Dog= 84% or about 25%
10. Cow= 80%
11. Zebrafish= 73%
12. Slug= 70%
13. Chicken= 65%
14. Fruit flies= 61% or about 60%
15. Banana= 60%
16. Tree= 50%
17. Cabbage= 45%
18. Honey bee= 44%
19. Appel= 40%
20. Yeast= 26%
21. Cauliflower= about 25.5%
22. Daffodil= 25%

What you can do

Each of us can help prevent animal suffering and deaths by buying cruelty-free products, donating only to charities that don’t experiment on animals, requesting alternatives to animal dissection, demanding the immediate implementation of humane, effective non-animal tests by government agencies and corporations were ever possible, and calling on our alma maters to stop experimenting on animals.

Outside resources

• Animal Testing by Humane Society International.
• Animal Testing 101 by PETA.

Sources

1. https://www.hsi.org/issues/animal-testing/
2. https://www.peta.org/features/animal-testing-facts-questions-answers/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing
4. https://animal-testing.procon.org/
5. https://www.hsi.org/news-media/about/
6. https://barkpost.com/discover/dog-human-dna/
7. https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/
8. ttps://sciencing.com/animals-share-human-dna-sequences-8628167.html
9. ttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-dna-share-cats-cattle-mice-same-genetics-code-a8292111.html
10. https://www.businessinsider.com/comparing-genetic-similarity-between-humans-and-other-things-2016-5
11. https://sciencing.com/animals-share-human-dna-sequences-8628167.html
12. https://www.saps.org.uk/saps-associates/browse-q-and-a/473-how-much-dna-do-plants-share-with-humans-over-99
13. http://education.seattlepi.com/animals-share-human-dna-sequences-6693.html
14. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/05/03/2887206.htm
15. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/acorn-worm-dna_n_564f5a50e4b0258edb3145dc
16. https://education.seattlepi.com/animals-share-human-dna-sequences-6693.html