Why Scientists Abuse Over 100 Million Animals Each Year

BY SOFO ARCHON

Many everyday products are made through cruel testing on animals.

In the following video, I uncover practices most people never hear about. If you care about animals, it’s definitely worth your time.

Transcript

Every year, over 100 million animals are being abused in the name of scientific progress. Mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, fish, birds, and monkeys are exploited and tortured in the name of medical and cosmetic advancements.

Rabbits have toxic substances dripped into their eyes until they experience agonizing pain or go blind. Beagles are being force-fed pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and other toxic substances until they die. And oftentimes, those that don’t die are killed to examine internal damage. Mice and rats are placed in small cubicles where they are forced to inhale cigarette smoke. Monkeys are being deliberately infected with deadly viruses such as HIV and Ebola. And the list of cruel experiments that scientists conduct on animals goes on and on.

The problem is, not only is animal testing tremendously cruel and inhumane, but it is also quite ineffective and unreliable. In fact, about 90% of drugs or other substances that pass animal testing fail in human trials. Which makes sense if you think about it, for human beings are very different from animals. Yes, we have a lot of similarities with them, but we also have a lot of differences. And when you consider the very unnatural environment in which those experiments are conducted and the immense stress that animals experience due to that, it makes sense that those studies are so unreliable.

Many times, drugs have passed animal testing, and they were sold on the market until it was realized that they were very dangerous, sometimes deadly. For example, there was a drug called thalidomide or something like that, which was sold on the market quite a long time ago to pregnant women. That drug caused birth defects in thousands of babies until it was retracted from the market.

The good news is that there are alternatives to animal testing—alternatives that do not involve animals, such as what is called in vitro testing, where scientists take human cells and tissues and expose them to different chemicals to see how they respond. There’s also what is called organs-on-chips, which are tiny devices that mimic human organs. And again, those can be exposed to different chemicals to see how they respond. Then you have computer modeling and artificial intelligence that use tons of data to predict how the human body would react to different chemicals or environments. Then you have human volunteer studies, where humans give their consent to participate in studies, unlike animals that are forced to participate in studies.

There are so many other methods that are much more reliable and much more effective. And yet scientists don’t really use them, although they’re legal to use. In a lot of studies where mostly animal testing is being used, scientists are not required to use animal testing. And yet they do because they don’t care about animals. They view animals as insensitive, soulless beings that do not have inherent value, but whose value lies only in what they can extract from them. So they use them and abuse them and discard them without feeling remorse.

If we want to stop that from happening, then we need to do something about it. Firstly, we need to stop using products that were developed through the use of animal testing. That is very difficult to do when it comes to medical drugs, for example, but it is very easy to do when it comes to cosmetics, for example. Nowadays, there is a certified label on a lot of products that says “cruelty-free”—certified by organizations that made sure that those products did not involve animal testing. But of course, that’s not enough. It is a good thing to do, but not enough.

The other thing that we can do, which is much more powerful, is to raise awareness about animal testing. Most people are not aware of it. They don’t know what animal testing involves, and they don’t know how many products on the market were developed through the use of animal testing. So we need to speak the truth about animal testing. We need to engage in or start conversations about it. People need to become aware. Only then will they wake up and want to do something about it.

And the third thing that we can do is to pressure governments, universities, and research institutes to put an end to animal testing. We can demand that. And the more of us gather to do that, the more effective we are going to be.