Expert: Robin Flynn - 3/24/2008

Question
I am writing a persuasive research paper against animal testing for my honors English class. I was wondering if you could tell me
1. a few experiments and maybe how they are done

2. some of the injuries the animals get from them, like, for example, blindness from the Draize Test.

3. some statistics like how many are permanently injured, or the percent of animals that die in result of the experiments.

Thank you.

Answer
Hi Amber,
I’m glad to see you are writing a paper against animal testing. It is a horrific  industry that tortures and kills millions of  animals every year AND puts humans at risk because the tests are not always accurate. I have included several tests and their outcomes below. I hope this helps with the first 2 questions. The third question is very hard to answer because not all animals are reported. PETA says: The vivisection industry is made up of tens of thousands of individuals and entities who profit from the misery, suffering, and deaths of more than 115 million animals a year (exact numbers are hard to come by since mice, rats, and birds, who make up 80 to 90 percent of those animals used, are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act and therefore go uncounted). http://www.stopanimaltests.com/AnimalResearchInd.asp

Additionally, Animals used in agricultural research (i.e. more than 50,000 farm animals in USDA labs) are excluded from the count too. The National Library of Medicine has estimated 100+ million mice and rats but this is just an estimate. 75 million "excess" mice, alone, are destroyed without even being used by researchers per year.

Tests and results:
The Eye Irritancy Testing, which is also called the Draize test, which forces chemicals into the eyes of fully conscious, restrained rabbits. 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 Skin Irritancy Testing, which places corrosive chemicals onto the shaved/raw skin of rabbits and guinea pigs. The caustic nature of these substances causes severe injuries to the animals. Gaping wounds and bleeding are common.

The Oral Toxicity Testing, the LD50, which force-feeds strong chemicals to fully conscious animals for 14-28 days until they die.

Another product that many people don’t know about is Splenda.  Splenda is the brand name for Sucralose and is made by Mcneil Specialty Products who are in turn owned by Johnson & Johnson. Splenda was tested at Huntingdon Life Sciences; one of the most obscene violators of 'animal welfare' in laboratory testing. HLS has been convicted of animal cruelty many times over. Below is info concerning Splenda from the Shac (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty).

http://www.shacamerica.net/splenda/splenda.htm

Huntingdon played a big role in the testing that took place to bring this product to the market. An estimated 12,800 animals died in the process according to a published report in a recent
scientific journal.

Some of the more gruesome details revealed:

• 32 beagle dogs were locked in metal cages for 52 weeks. They were given Sucralose mixed in with their normal feed, and blood and urine samples were collected. At the end of the study they were killed by means of exsanguinations - they had their throats slit open and bled
to death. They were then cut open and their organs - by now drained of blood so easier to dissect - were examined to test the product's toxicity levels.

• Four beagle puppies (or as HLS calls them – punching bags) were starved before being force-fed the super-sweet sugar powder. HLS employees then took blood samples from the jugulars of the infant dogs.

• An unspecified number of marmoset monkeys either died from the poisoning or were killed at the termination of the research at HLS.

• The report states that 12 of these monkeys, which were babies – under 10 months old – were force-fed Sucralose for seven weeks. Two of the primates died on the seventh day from brain defects, another primate was mysteriously killed after four weeks, and the remainder
all were murdered at the completion of the seventh week. Some of the recorded observations from this study noted “in appetence, body weight loss, unwillingness to use hind leg, hopping, involuntary grip reflexes, salivation and subdued mood.”

• Huntingdon also used rabbits to study the effects of the product. These little animals were given 1200 times the expected daily intake and not surprisingly most died from the trauma. Many of the other rabbits suffered from convulsions, weight loss, and various intestinal disorders.

• Huntingdon also tested the product on pregnant rabbits, mice, and rats – killing both the mothers and the fetuses.


One of the aims of the experiments was to see the effect on the central nervous system of the animals and in turn the animals were given massive doses of sucralose. Serious questions have been raised as to the safety of sucralose yet here it is widely available in
many service stations, Pret a Manger and Starbucks to name a few outlets. We invite anyone reading this to enter sucralose or Splenda into a Google search and read the detailed and widespread evidence on the dangers of sucralose.



Some additional website that may be useful in your paper. Some of these site state statistics.

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/images/pdf/factfiles/exp.pdf
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=125
http://www.uncaged.co.uk/vivisect.htm
http://www.stopanimaltests.com/f-pointcounterpoint.asp
http://www.pcrm.org/newsletter/mar08/monkey_death.html
http://www.pcrm.org/resch/charities/mod_overview.html
http://www.stopanimaltests.com/us-gov.asp



For the Animals,
Robin