The Ethical Question: Should Animal Testing Be Allowed?

Your medication, vaccines, medical treatments, cures, pharmaceuticals, food and cosmetics: it’s all safe. Humans have tested and ensured that what they put in and on your body is effective and safe for you. But how did we come to know that those things were safe for us? There is a good chance that that knowledge came from animals. Animal testing is a common way to see if chemicals would be okay in the human body, or to test how well medications would perform. However, there is an ethical debate on whether animal testing is justified. Animal testing should be outlawed.

Animal testing should be banned because it’s extremely cruel to the animals. According to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,) “Mice, rats, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and other animals have been suffering in experiments for more than a century. During the last 100 years, sensitive animals trapped in laboratories have been burned, shocked, poisoned, forcibly impregnated, decapitated, locked away in isolation from other members of their species, and made to endure countless other atrocities” (“Cruelty to Animals in Laboratories”). Hurt, mutilated, physically abused, mentally traumatized, and completely trapped. Internationally, countless animals are being tortured. And all for what? Yes, of course it would be cruel to do this to humans, but is it not completely unfair to do it to other helpless creature who are innocent and don’t even take part in whatever benefits we gain from their suffering? It is normalized in our world to not care for these animals and to push it to the back of our minds as we consume what came from their manipulation. Let’s stop pushing it away and start empathizing.

Animal testing should be outlawed because it is a waste of life. The National Library of Medicine states: “In addition to these examples of abuse in animal experiments, a topic that has been discussed recently is that although thousands of animals are spent on scientific experiments, the majority of these studies are not published or the impact of the published ones on scientific progress is controversial due to the limited transfer of animal experimental data to humans. Öztürk and Ersan reported that more than 40% of animal experiments that were represented at national orthopedic congress in Türkiye over a nine-year period were never published, and 38% of those that were published never cited or were cited only once. They found that 4,440 animals were euthanized for no obvious scientific gain in unpublished studies. Unpublished animal studies result in waste of animal life” (“The dark side of animal experiments”). Not only are countless animals being mutilated in labs, but often also the results aren’t even being put to beneficial use. Even if you can ignore the gruesome immorality of torturing animals because we need them, how are you to ignore the fact that immense percentages of the research that we used their innocents lives for is never used or even published. It is unjust, and frankly irresponsible as a human race to waste thousand of animal lives as we do.

Alternatively, many find animal testing necessary for research because our systems have grown to rely on it. Harvard Medical School claims, “Certain experiments are simply impossible in humans. For example, researchers who study the gut microbiome must often feed different groups of animals strictly controlled diets. They must keep them in an entirely sterile environment free of any germs or engineer them to have guts completely free of any microbes. None of this is possible in humans” (“Why Animal Research Is Necessary”). The way that the research world is set up, put simply, relies on animals. Our medical research, chemical and cosmetic research all depend on the use of animals. Whether it be because we can engineer them to the specific way we need them to be or just because risking their life “doesn’t cost as much” as a person’s life. And although they are essential to many scientific breakthrough’s the results don’t justify the mutilation and torment that the animals are put through only for our benefit. It is true that we now depend on animal testing, but that does not mean that the world should not or can not change.

Thus, animal testing is not justified by human causes and should be banned. Despite our current (at least partial) dependence on it, animal testing it unjust, wasteful, and barbarous. Even if we grow to show compassion towards animals in labs, what are we to do about it? How do we begin taking actions against animal testing? In fact, we must begin change. We can support brands that are becoming cruelty-free. There are also many organizations that go against animal testing that offer petitions to help the cause. But most importantly, your voice is power. Speak up so that people no longer can push the subject to the back of their mind and away from conversations. Those creatures did nothing to earn what we put them through in tests; animal testing must be outlawed.

[ WRITTEN FOR AN EIGHTH GRADE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS CLASS. THIS ESSAY IS TO BE USED ONLY AS AN EXAMPLE. PLEASE NOTE: ANY COPYING OR USAGE OF MY WORK (WITHOUT QUOTES AND CREDIT) IS DEFINED AS PLAGIARISM. ]