Picture this, your home is a filthy, cramped cage surrounded by other cages. Every day you wake up to the screams and pained moans of prisoners as they are tortured in the name of science. You tremble because you are next. People in white lab coats come and take you from your cage. You are painfully injected with various serums, and searing chemicals are dropped in your eyes. You keep telling yourself that this pain will soon be over, but it won’t. Your life is a science experiment.

Sound like a science-fiction novel? Unfortunately it’s not. You just got a glimpse into the life of an animal used for scientific testing. I believe that treating animals this way is both unethical and immoral. Animal testing is cruel and inhumane; there are better solutions to advance science.

When was the last time you used makeup? How about laundry detergent or dish soap? The last time you went to the doctor and were given a prescription? All of those products were most likely tested on animals. The Massachusetts Coalition for Animal Rights describes what often occurs when rabbits are experimented on: “No pain relievers or anesthetics of any kind are used. The extreme pain often causes them to struggle so severely that they break their own backs – dying in agony needlessly.” The Humane Society International reminds us that animals used in testing often are deprived of food and water and are exposed to diseases, drugs, and chemicals that cause pain and even death. According to the Humane Society, “registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12,000 animals.” These animals have done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Ironically, animals do not make ideal stand-ins for humans in scientific tests. The reason that animals have been test subjects for so long is that scientists believed their genetic makeup to be similar enough to humans’. However, this is untrue. “Even chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, do not accurately predict results in humans – of the more than 80 HIV vaccines that have proven safe and efficacious in chimpanzees (as well as other nonhuman primates), all have failed to protect or prove safe in humans in nearly 200 human clinical trials, with one actually increasing a human’s chance of HIV infection,” according to the New England Anti-Vivisection Society. Therefore, this testing is not only harming animals, but it is harming people.

Mice are a good example of why experimentation on animals is ineffective. Mice are reported to have a genetic makeup that is 98 percent similar to humans. The New York Times tells us that “The vast majority of animal experiments, roughly 95 percent, involve rodents bred for research.” However, this does not make them reliable test subjects. In the article “The Experiment Is on Us: Science of Animal Testing Thrown into Doubt,” authors Pat Dutt and Jonathan Latham tell us that “Researchers examined the activity of specific biological signaling pathways after similar treatments. These too were highly divergent between mice and humans. Surprised by the consistently poor correlations between the two species, the authors then tested other human/mouse models of inflammatory diseases. Again, the similarity between mice and humans was low.” Why are we testing on animals if it is not useful?

There are many alternatives to the inhumane and unreliable testing on animals. For example, scientists have developed computerized simulators that are quite reliable. These highly sophisticated programs can bleed, talk, and even virtually die. ­According to PETA, computer program human-­patient simulators have proven effective. “Ninety-­seven percent of medical schools across the U.S. have completely replaced the use of animal laboratories in medical training with simulators like this, as well as virtual-reality systems, computer simulators, and supervised clinical experience.”

Another reliable solution is “organs on a chip.” This method of testing is a computer chip that is lined with human cells that can replicate the mechanical and chemical functions of a living organ. This device is the size of a flash drive and is flexible. They are cost effective and do not require animal testing. According to PETA, some companies have already turned these chips into products that other researchers can use in place of animals.

Every day animals are harmed in the name of science. Animal testing might be worth the trouble, except for the fact that it is unreliable and does not provide a useful stand-in for humans. We need to implement new methods of testing now, before more animals are tortured needlessly.