Essay/Term paper: Animal rights

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Research Papers

Many humans use animals for testing each year. Animal testing is when the animals are put through something or injected to see how they react to what medical research they have been used for. Animals are used to find cures for diseases or to test drugs that have mild side effects. They are also used to test materials for cosmetic research.

Except for severely limited medical research, animal testing should be outlawed. Animal testing endangers the animal"s lives and may cause serious side affect that last the rest of their lives. Others believe that they should not test medicine on humans because humans" lives are more precious than that of the animals. They believe that since animals have no rights that they should be used for testing.

There are three very important reasons why animals should not be used for testing harmful or dangerous materials. One of these is that testing and its use is trivial in the cosmetic industry. The second reason is that animals have rights and animals can feel pleasure and pain just as humans do. The third reason is that testing is cruel and unusual.

Another reason is that animal testing and its use is trivial in the cosmetic industry. Testing on animals for the cosmetic industry is not necessary because they have many other ways to find out if it harms the human race. The testing that goes on is harmful to the animals and can cause serious side effects. The cosmetic companies hold down bunnies in vices and spray the cosmetics into their eyes to see if it cause them redness, stinging, or even blindness. They also have baboons strapped down with their heads in vices to do certain tests on them. Animals are also used by pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs and health supplements. They estimate that 17 to 22 million animals are used each year for medical research, and these estimates do not include rats, mice, fish, and farm animals. That means that 90% of all research animals are not included in the statistics. Too many animals are being tested and they do not even need to use the animals for these tests. They can use computer software materials and get the same results.

One more point is that animals do have rights. The activists of the animal rights movements do not claim that animals are the moral equivalent of humans, just that their feelings deserve some consideration. Animals are just as alive as we are and they follow the course as we do, they find food, they produce offspring, they overcome challenges, therefore, they have intelligence. We argue that humans have many qualities – such as a complex language, sophisticated reasoning, and a highly evolved culture; that animals do not have. The animals also have this, dolphins communicate with each other, and the baboon uses sticks as a tool to gather ants, and still animals are not significant. Many animals are used, and even killed, for the sake of medical research. The have a right is to have a claim or entitlement to something and to have that claim recognized by others. The bad news for animals is two-fold. First, in all the cases of women"s rights, the abolition of slavery, and ending apartheid, a good part of the political momentum comes from the oppressed themselves. Secondly, empathy for the oppressed by influential outsides came because the outsides could identify with the oppressed – because they are human. So we must continue to stand up for animal rights. No animal needs die when software can be used for testing.

The third, and final reason to defend animal rights, is that animal testing is cruel and unusual. Animals are used every day to help find a cure for a certain disease in many painful ways. In 1984 at LaLoma Medical Center in California, a child had a heart transplant with a baboon"s heart and dies only two days later. Some called it a medical miracle. Other thought is unholy to mingle body parts of humans with animals. The early vivisection"s (the cutting open of living animals without any anesthetics), shed light on biological functions, but also killed many animals in the process. The first kidney transplants were done on ver hundred of dogs and are not relatively safe for humans. The University of Pennsylvania had 60 hours of videotape stolen from the medical lab. On these videotapes, it showed baboons being knocked out by a blow to the head, while their heads are cemented into plastic helmets. They also show baboons waking up in the middle of surgery, mostly operations on their brains. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute in Maryland was using monkeys to test radiation. The monkeys were exposed to various doses of radiation and then forced to run on a treadmill. If they stopped running they were given electric shock to keep them moving. Others vomited during the experimentation and they were given increasingly painful shocks to keep them moving and some did not die for more than five days. There were dogs that were used in the research on relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The dogs were being forced to breathe nicotine-laden smoke through a tube in their throats. Federal agencies have their own testing facilities, but they also delegate testing to Universities and commercial laboratories. Government regulatory agencies protect corporations by determining how much poison can be "safely" absorbed into animals. There are chickens hanging by their feet from a conveyer belt that shoves them through an automatic throat-slicing machine. Or the deep basket full of baby male chicks struggling not to be smothered before they are ground into feed. Or the veal – calves raised in a crate so small that it could not turn around or walk – just to keep its meat tender. "At the University of Pennsylvania baboons are place din vices and they have their heads snapped around so violently that some have seizures, go limp, or even die, all the while the lab doctors stand around and laugh about their faces. There are certain experiments where puppies are burned, cat"s eyelids are sewn shut, and baboons" heads are crushed – and we wonder if these acts can be justified. Finally, there is the Lethal Dose 50 test. It is a test primarily used to test potential dangerous chemicals and new drugs. They get 100 lab animals and give them a dosage of the drug, and they keep receiving a dosage until 50 of the lab animals die – hence the name –Lethal Dose 50. Is this necessary? Should animals sacrifice their lives for chemicals and new drugs?

With all the other alternatives to animal testing, with sever limits, it should be outlawed. Animals used in cosmetic testing should not continue, because animals have certain rights, such as humans, and the testing is cruel and unusual for any living thing. Millions of innocent animals are used for testing and continue to be infected, catch diseases, or in certain cases die because we do not care enough to do anything about it?



BIBLIOGRAPHY







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Owen, Marna A. Animal Rights-Yes or No? New York: Lerner Publications Company, 1992



Rohr, Janelle, Ed. Animal Rights: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhouse Press Inc, 1989.



Wagner, Wendeline L. "They Shoot Monkeys, Don"t They." ProQuest: 27-29(August 1997)