Viewing animal testing from a wider perspective

Viewing animal testing from a wider perspective

Tesing animals for commercial purposes has become a highly controversial issue. It

can be pointed out that it may be the most effective way to test certain products since

animals are approppriate subjects because of their similar organism. However,

considering the animals’ point of view, this may not be entirely true. Testing cosmetic

products on animals is a highly inhuman and unnecessary practice.

From the physical point of view, it can be concluded that animal testing involves

cruelty and brutality. Animals are forced into circumstances under which they are

suffering, basically. For instance, they are often deprived of food and water during the

research period. These are basic necessities which they can not get to for a relatively long

time because of the experiments. Animals are also physically restrained and vulnerable,

since they have to stand all kinds of brutal methods that testers use on them. The Draize

Eye test is one of them, which tests reaction of the eyes of the subjects to find whether the

certain product causes irritation or not. Animals are not always given anesthesia, which

makes their suffering even more painful and unbearable. Testing animals predominantly

leads to their death.

From a scientific perspective, there are other, alternative testing methods which could

easily replace the necessity of using animals as the subject of experiments. For instance,

artificial human skins, such as EpiDerm or ThinCert could be a more effective way of

testing, since they are created by using human skin cells. There are also existing computer

models, which are responsible for determining the level of toxicity of substances.

Microdosing, the studying of the human’s reaction to drugs can be used on people on a

voluntary basis. These proceedings do not involve making experiments on animals, yet

are proven to be effective and provide more reliable results in human beings than animal

testing would do.

From the biological point of view, humans and animals can not be considered to be

alike. There are several anatomic, metabolic and cellular differences between people and

animals which suggest that testing animals is not always the most reliable source of

research. Our metabolism is similar to animals’, yet we can observe significant

differences between them. Animals do not always react the same way to certain products

Zsuzsanna Szabó

as humans do. Furthermore, the circumstances under which animals are tested are

significant factors to take into consideration. Experiments create an unnatural

environment for animals in a way that their reaction can be easily influenced by the

circumstances under which the testing is carried out.

Taking into consideration the above mentioned aspects, it can be concluded that

testing cosmetic products on animals is inhuman and unnecessary. There are several

substitute methods, which seem to be more efficient and morally accepted and

they do not involve the torturing of animals. All in all, scientists should rely more on

alternative testing methods.

Sources:

http://animal-testing.procon.org/