FREE ESSAY ON ANIMAL RIGHTS

ANIMAL RIGHTS

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. 
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 causes 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 dies 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?