Stop Experiments on Animals, It's Just Bad Science.

Can you imagine being put in a cold metal cage, no companionship, no one ever giving the slightest sign of love and never understanding why someone keeps hurting you day after day?  It's just plain wrong, and it has to stop.

Please help to stop experiments on animals. Not only for saving the animals, but because we should have test, that are reliable, & accurate for humans. We take the word of pharmaceutical companies that the product is safe, but how can that be if the experiments are preformed on animals, not humans.

It is often claimed that animal testing is indispensable, because a »complete organism« is supposedly required for the development of pharmaceutical drugs. Animals may well be complete organisms, but they are the wrong ones. Animals and humans differ considerably with regard to anatomy, physiology and metabolism. Even animals of different species can react quite differently to chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs. It is not possible to predict whether a human will react identically or differently based on the results of experiments conducted on animals.

One study conducted by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer came to the conclusion that »one would be better off tossing a coin than relying on animal experiments to answer the question of carcinogenic substances. Only 5 - 25% of the substances harmful to humans also have adverse effects on the experimental animals. Tossing a coin delivers better results«.

The numerous pharmaceutical drugs that were considered safe based on animal experiments, but caused serious or even lethal adverse effects in humans, are proof that the results of animal experiments cannot be transferred to humans with the necessary reliability. Lipobay®, Vioxx®, Trasylol®, Acomplia® and TGN1412 are just the tip of the iceberg. (Remember Thalidomide? it was harmless to animals including primates and their babies)

Animal experiments contribute nothing to the development of new therapies. The pharmaceuticals industry conducts them only to hedge their liability in case something goes wrong with one of their products. I cannot see where animals testing could protect their liability since it is now, well known that animal test are not accurate. It only shows that these companies are not using advanced methods and are therefore liable.

Tens of thousands of animals must die for each product. In most cases the products tested do not even advance medical science. The company Bayer redefined the completely normal condition of elderly men as a »testosterone deficiency syndrome«, in order to create a new market for hormone drugs. Many drugs are identical and are only marketed under different names. According to the WHO only 325 medicines are actually essential.

Animal experiments are bad science. The animals do not have the disease or disorder that the drug is being tested for. Since most human diseases do not occur in animals, their symptoms are simulated using »model organisms«. For instance, in order to induce Parkinson’s disease, monkeys, rats or mice are injected with a neurotoxin that destroys brain cells. Cancer is induced in mice by means of genetic engineering or injecting cancer cells. Cerebral strokes are caused in mice by inserting a thread into a cerebral artery. Diabetes in rats is caused by injecting a toxin that destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Heart attacks are simulated in dogs by constricting a coronary artery with a noose.  

Dogs are also abused in human-disease studies, including studies of heart and hormonal disorders.

At Ohio State University, vivisector George Billman forced surgically manipulated dogs to run on a treadmill until they collapsed from a heart attack. The dogs were killed, and the damage to their heart tissue was studied.

In a violent experiment at the University of Pennsylvania,  PUPPIES  were bred to have a degenerative eye disease that culminates in blindness. During the study, 3-WEEK-OLD BEAGLES had their eyes cut out and were killed.

The artificially induced symptoms have nothing in common with the human disorders they are supposed to simulate. Important aspects of the origins of the disorders, such as diet, lifestyle habits, drug consumption, harmful environmental influences, stress, and psychological and social factors, are not taken into consideration. The results of studies using animals are therefore misleading and irrelevant.

In fact, research based on animal experimentation repeatedly fails all along the line. 92% of potential pharmaceutical drugs that are shown by animal testing to be effective and safe do not pass clinical trials, either because of insufficient effectiveness or undesired side effects. Of the 8% of substances that are approved, half are later taken off the market because grave, often even lethal side effects in humans become evident.

The way in which animals and humans react to their environments, both physiologically and behaviorally, can be drastically different, and the conditions under which laboratory animals are kept can influence and alter experimental results. The husbandry and treatment of laboratory animals has been and continues to be a major topic of ethical debate

Alternatives to animal testing are primarily based on biochemical assays, on experiments in cells that are carried out in vitro, and on computational models and algorithms. These techniques are typically far more sophisticated and specific than traditional approaches to testing in whole animals, and many in vitro tests are capable of producing information about the biological effects of a test compound that are as accurate and in some cases more accurate than information collected from studies in whole animals.

Another example of a toxicity test performed on animals that often produces inaccurate results is the Draize test, in which a chemical, such as a cosmetic or pharmaceutical agent, is applied to the skin or eye of a rabbit. The results are supposed to indicate how toxic a chemical is to human skin. The inaccuracy of the Draize test has been recognized for many years, but its replacement has not been a simple matter, and the development of better in vitro techniques has taken nearly a decade. The European Union recently approved a replacement for the Draize test called the EpiSkin® test, which is an in vitro method that uses test-tube sized models of human skin. The approval of EpiSkin®, which was created by L’Oreal and IMEDEX, a small research-and-development company, is a milestone in the progress toward discovering reliable alternatives to animal testing and serves as a model for the development of other alternative techniques.

Please, we are living in the 21st century and we need to be using more reliable, accurate testing methods, as opposed to archaic, backward, and worthless animals testing. When it comes to the use of animals for testing, remember that you are abusing animals in some of the worst ways possible.
As Jeremy Bentham said
The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?

Spread the word that animal test are wrong,  not only for the abuse suffered by the animals, but they don't tell if the drugs are safe or lethal to humans.