Urge the USA to BAN Animal Experimentation!

Dear Mr. President,

We the undersigned are outraged that in the United States of America, it is still legal to test out cosmetics, personal care products, drugs, foods and beverages and household cleaning products on animals before they are tested on humans or made available to the public. We urge you to immediately ban all animal testing, and replace any and all animals in research with humane, non-animal alternative methods. 

We are sure that you know that the information garnered from animal models is not necessarily accurate or predictive. And the information certainly does not protect consumers. In fact, data from animal models often causes more harm than good. Sometimes, drugs are approved too quickly on positive results in animals. Then, patients take them and fall ill and may die as a result. We cannot allow this dangerous practice of animal tests to continue, at the expense of not only animals, but humans as well.
We are aware that the FDA itself has noted that 92 percent of all drugs shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they are unsafe or ineffective. And of the 8 percent that are approved for human usage, half of them are relabeled because of dangerous side effects that were not identified in the animal model. This is not sound science, and we cannot be basing the research that will affect the future of our health and wellness off of such inaccuracy.

We also understand that relying on animal experimentation is a waste of time and resources, and can impede or delay discovery. According to the American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Researchers vainly waste time, money, effort, and animal lives trying to create an animal model of a human disease. A classic example is the discovery that smoking significantly increases the risk of lung cancer. The finding was first reported in 1954 on the basis of an epidemiological study. The report was dismissed, however, because lung cancer due to inhalation of cigarette smoke could not be induced in animal models, and it wasn’t until 30 years later that the U.S. Surgeon General finally issued the warning on cigarettes.”

We also know that the main reasons that animal data is used in the drug approval process is so that pharmaceutical companies can hasten their drugs through approval, minimizing the costs, and so that pharmaceutical companies can have liability protection, so that if their drug harms a human they can safely say that it caused no such harm in the animal tests. These are not sound reasons to be causing harm to many thousands of animals, and to be using bad science as a basis for the research done on products the majority of Americans will use.

Alternatives to animal tests are effective, reliable, affordable and humane. Unlike crude, archaic animal tests,  non-animal methods usually take less time to complete, cost only a fraction of what the animal experiments cost, and do not face the problems that are inevitable in animal tests due to the difference in species. 

Ending animal experiments would not halt research. From experience, we know that scientists can quickly and easily devise new techniques with which to achieve their goal. And in this case, we already have plenty of alternatives.

Human clinical and epidemiological studies, human tissue and cell-based research methods, cadavers, sophisticated high-fidelity human patient simulators and computational models are just a sampling of the other options for testing drugs that are out there. For example, progressive scientists have used human brain cells to develop a model 'micro- brain,' which can be used to study tumors, as well as artificial skin and bone marrow. We can now test irritancy on protein membranes, produce and test vaccines using human tissues, and perform pregnancy tests using blood samples instead of cruelly taking the lives of animals. Animal experiments are bad science, and they only persist because of personal biases and archaic traditions. If we can have more reliable, more precise, less expensive, and more humane ways of gathering data, then why don't we use them?

In order to protect the health and safety of American consumers, and to promote the humane treatment of animals in society, it is critical that non-animal alternative tests consistently be used instead of animal tests to research and approve all sorts of products.

We the undersigned urge the United States to immediately replace all animals in research with humane, non-animal alternative methods. There is no longer a reason to test on animals, and the tests are a danger to American consumers who use these products. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.