According to PETA, “More than 100 million animals every year suffer and die in cruel chemical, drug, food and cosmetic tests, biology lessons, medical training exercises, and curiosity-driven medical experiments.” With access to cheaper, more accurate alternatives, why do so many corporations and universities rely on animal testing for their experiments?

Almost every experiment involving any type of animal could be described as being “wasteful” or “unreliable”. The Food and Drug Administration reported that of all the drugs that test safe and effective in animal experiments, 92 percent are found to be either unsafe or ineffective in humans. This leaves a mere 8 percent of the millions of experiments conducted on animals each year to just be described as “useful”.


Many of these “useful” experiments still may be able to be deemed as “useless”. A U.S. General Accounting Office review of the safety of all new drugs marketed since 1985 shows the uselessness of many of these “successful” tests. Of the 198 new drugs with available data, all of which were previously animal-tested before approval, 102 were more dangerous than the animal tests had proven. Many of these 102 drugs were forced to be relabeled or completely withdrawn.

The results of the tests performed could, however, be influenced by the high amount of stress that these animals are forced to endure. According to an article from the Yale Journal of Medicine & Law, “Animals start out being shipped as freight and end up in the chronic confinement of a laboratory. They are unable to move freely, unable to get away from their own wastes, and, at intervals, are taken from their cages for instrumentation, blood tests, surgery, weighing, or whatever else is on the laboratory schedule. These effects are routine for the laboratory staff, but can be terrifying for animals. When animals are stressed, their immune response, hormone levels, cancer rates, and susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections all change. Stressed animals frequently exhibit illnesses of various kinds, leaving experimenters to sort out which symptoms are caused by the drugs being tested and which are caused by lab conditions or other unknown factors.” With this in mind, scientists should be encouraged to either attempt to create a calm and stable environment for animals, or to, preferably, discontinue the use of any kind of animal for the use of research.

Although many scientists continue to consciously harm and torture animals for means of research, scientists around the world are starting to find ways to avoid using animals in their research. They are beginning to find alternative experiments that not only are humane, they also tend to be more cost-effective and reliable than the conventional animal tests. These alternative follow a set of principles called the “Three R’s”. These “R’s” are: Replacement(Refers to the preferred use of non-animal methods over animal methods whenever it is possible to achieve the same scientific aim.), Reduction(Refers to methods that enable researchers to obtain comparable levels of information from fewer animals, or to obtain more information from the same number of animals.), and Refinement(refers to methods that alleviate or minimize potential pain, suffering or distress, and enhance animal welfare for the animals used.) The only flaw of creating alternative experiments is the fact that the validation and acceptance of these experiments is commonly an annoyingly slow process that may take a few years. Today, nearly 50 alternative experiments have been created in order to minimize the use of animals for experimentation. This includes the creation of EpiSkin, EpiDerm, and SkinEthic, all of which are synthetic human skin that rescue thousands of rabbits from enduring countless amounts of painful skin corrosion and irritation tests.

While I was researching for this essay, I came across a story that made me sick to my stomach. This story took place in 2002, when PETA investigated Columbia University after hearing claims of, “the abuse of animals used in invasive experiments at the school.” PETA was able to release the horrific things that occurred inside the laboratories of the Columbia University to the public, such as, “Baboons were used in horrific experiments, in which their eyes were cut out—sometimes while they were conscious—and the arteries to their brains were clamped to crudely induce strokes. Test drugs were then given to the animals and effects were measured over several days. The baboons suffered without any analgesics or anesthetics.” Also, “One experimenter at Columbia implanted steel pipes in monkeys' heads to observe the effects of stress on their menstrual cycles. Undercover video footage shows monkeys with pipes protruding from their skulls and blood dripping down their faces.” These acts both alarm and anger me, because Columbia University supposedly still collects, “hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars,” in order to perform horrific experiments on defenseless animals. Columbia University should not be rewarded for performing cruel experiments for “research”. Hopefully, this essay drastically adjusted your view of the use of animals for research purposes.