I was requested to provide you with more information on the subject to guide future presentations so let's begin:
Animal testing is used in the world for many things, from the very cosmetics the girls use to the drugs used to fight cancer. Eventhough some of these uses might sound more altruist the fact is that the suffering caused to the animals on the process goes far beyond the limit. For example, the following was taken from
http://www.uncaged.c...s/2002/iams.htm and talks about how cruel these actions can be.
Iams is a well known company that produces food for cats and dogs, but these are the atrocities they comit right now:• Force-feeding dogs which resulted in muscle tremors, vomiting and frothing around the mouth.
• Six week old English Pointer puppies were fed a zinc deficient diet resulting in lesions, hair loss, frothing at the mouth, eye discharge, ulcerations and blisters.
• Mice, hamsters, rabbits, dogs and pigs were involved in a lethal poisoning experiment to establish how quickly they would die. The animals suffered from bloody diarrhoea, kidney and liver damage and were seen vomiting and shaking before dying. Tissue samples were also obtained from healthy animals for comparison. Pointer dogs were shot in the head and then had their blood drained. Mice, hamsters and rabbits were killed by a blow to the head.
• Twenty-four female beagle dogs were overfed and starved respectively to estimate body fat. All were killed and their bodies were drained of blood and passed through a carcass grinder.
• Sixteen kittens were fed a deficient diet resulting in eye damage. Blood was then drawn by puncturing the heart. They were then gassed.
• Domestic kittens were subjected to ammonia intoxication. They began to vomit and displayed severe lethargy within 4 hours.
These are warnings about procter & gamble actions:• The secretly filmed video shows P&G killing 48 monkeys to test a nasal decongestant already in human use.
• Over 500 companies produce like-for-like products which are safe for consumers, that are no longer or have never been tested on animals.
• Physiological differences between species means animal testing can be dangerously misleading as an accurate indication of human reactions, hence dangerous drugs like eraldin, suprofen, opren, thalidomide, troglitazone, and many more are inflicted on human patients.
• Animal tests have failed to show the dangerous effects that P&G's own commercial products have caused, e.g. Oil of Ulay New Skin Discovery and Max Factor Active Response Cream which caused high eye and skin irritation, despite the fact that, as Dr White a consultant at St. John's Institute of Dermatology at St. Thomas's Hospital, London pointed out: "They did every test they could have done. They tested it on animals and every other way they could think of.....but none of the tests predicted the problems."
• Medical staff use information gained from human experience in deciding how to treat cases of accidental poisoning.
• Procter & Gamble spends more on advertising in 7 days than it has done in 11 years on developing humane testing methods.
These are simply 2 cases of the many that exist nowadays. For science animals are good enough to provide acurate information about human physiology but never good enough to be treated with respect and with equal rights. The question is always simpler that it might sound. Would anybody authorize science to kill humans for the sake of new methods to provide money ? Would anybody sacrifice their sons/daughters/fathers/mothers on experimentation that leads only to placebos ? Have we forgot that when we say "all men are equal" we are refering to our "humanity" and that "humanity" is a concept that applies also to the other animals we live with in this world. Often I read "we are alone in the universe". Silly words from silly men that haven't understood that we are not alone in these world. But if we continue with the predation of these planet soon we will find ourselves alone with our sins, a solitude that will be whispered by the wind at the sound of "murderers". We need to open our eyes to the world around or we will lose the chances to meet our neightbors and to speak a language long forgotten by the sound of our machines, our pride and our infinite stupidity.