awHaT iS aNiMaL AbUSe???

I think animal testing is OK if it is for a product that will save or significantly improve peoples lives, and if there are no alternatives that are at least as effective. However, there are now several means of medical testing that are more effective than animal testing and don't involve any animals (or humans) getting hurt. With a little more funding and publicity for these alternatives, animal testing could be greatly reduced and we would have safer medecines.

Glad to see you're against cosmetics, then. The thing about medical tests, though, is that they're more or less useless. You prove that a drug that will eventually be used on humans works on a particular kind of animal. Big whoop.

I didn't say I was in favour of medical testing, I said I was in favour only when there are no better alternatives, and there usually are better alternatives.

The animal tests aren't useless because humans and animals are a lot more similar than we think- after all we share 98% of our DNA with chimps, and doctors and vets study exactly the same things for the first two years. A lot of good things have been achieved through animal testing. However, I do think it's time to move on now because we do now have alternatives which are more effective and more ethical, so in cases where these can be used, there is no excuse for continuing to use animal experiments. We also need more research into the alternatives so they can used in a wider variety of situations. Hopefully at some point we will be able to phase out animal experiments altogether. I don't think we can do that just yet, but we can reduce the numbers quite a lot, and I don't know why people aren't doing that.

In college I wrote an essay on vivisection (animal testing)and it is unreliable. Even if using Chimps, who are our closest genetic relative, the tests still won't tell you how humans will react to a product because that 2% genetic difference makes a huge difference. Chimps were once used for AIDS research, however, chimps don't develop AIDS when infected with HIV. Since chimps have such an opposite reaction with HIV it is only logical to realize that anything tested on chimps or any other non-human animal could also have cause different reactions amongst the species. An example is protease inhibitors, which are used to treat people with AIDS and have been life saving for many. The pharmaceutical company, Merck, delayed the release of these drugs for 4 years because the drugs killed lab dogs and rats. The opposite is also true. A drug found safe for a test species can be harmful to another species. An example of this is Fenphen. Animal testing showed that this once popular diet drug had no serious side effects, but in humans the drug caused heart-valve defect. The drug was quickly pulled from the market. Here is a quote from AAVS (American Anti-vivisection society) mentioning other cases. "The undeniable fact of the matter is that different animals vary in their response to drugs. The drugs Fialuridine, designed to treat hepatitis, was shown to be safe in tests with dogs, woodchucks, monkeys and other animals, but a number of fatalities resulted from pre-market clinical screening with humans. Penicillin, the archetypal "miracle drug" is fatal to guinea pigs, but has saved countless human lives. The drugs Oraflex, Selacryn, Zomax, Suprol and Meritol produced such adverse side effects in humans that they were removed from the market, though animal experimentation had predicted all of them to be safe. The list goes on and on." Also, adding to the unreliability of vivisection is that most human diseases are caused by the environment, lifestyle and diet. While, lab animals are bred in a controlled, sterile environment and most diseases are induced. People are falsely led to believe that animal testing weeds out harmful drugs, but the only way to be 100% sure how a drug effects humans is to test them on humans. Although this also seems unethical, at least a human has the choice to volunteer to be apart of an experiment. If someone has a fatal disease they could be given that choice to be apart of an experiment, but only if they are fully aware of possibly having adverse side effects, including death. It would still be their choice. Besides all drugs are eventually tested on humans. It is just usually without their knowledge. When a newly release drug hits the market the people who first use it are "human guinea pigs". They just never agreed to be one and have a false sense in believing this new drug is safe.