Expert: Robin Flynn - 12/3/2007

Question
i wan to know a percentage of how many animals are physically life longed engerd from animals testing and do you think its wrong i do taking animals against there will to harm them would you like that to happen to you.

Answer
Hi Brittany,

I hope I understand your question. I'll do my best to answer it. I have included excepts from Peta and a past response to another person with similar questions. Please read below.

An industry overview from Peta:
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).

The best way to understand how the vivisection industry works is to start with the animals themselves. First, there isn't a species of nonhuman animal experimenters won't exploit. Dogs, mice, rats, cats, fruit flies, zebra fish, macaques, baboons, chimpanzees, horses, pigs, chickens, bees, etc., are all up for grabs. Second, animals used in experimentation are supplied to laboratories by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-licensed Class A and/or Class B dealers. Class A dealers sell "purpose-bred" animals, born into this world only to be experimented on and then killed. Class B dealers supply "random source" animals purchased at auctions, "adopted" from unsuspecting individuals who placed "free to a good home" ads in their local papers and/or are stolen from people's backyards and outside of stores while their human companions are inside. Finally, these animals are offered for sale to experimenters via word of mouth and in publications like Lab Animal magazine. Also advertised in this publication are the cages, miniature guillotines (used to chop off the heads of live rats), and other sadistic devices used by the vivisection industry.

Animals bred and procured for use in experimentation can end up in any one of the thousands of laboratories (owned and operated by the makers of personal care and household products, colleges and universities, drug and chemical manufacturers, state and federal regulatory agencies, etc) in the United States that conduct experiments on animals. Furthermore, there are as many different types of animal experiments as there are laboratories conducting them; animals are cloned, bred for their organs, addicted to drugs and alcohol, forced to inhale and/or ingest toxic substances, subjected to maternal deprivation experiments, purposely deafened with loud noises, made to suffer strokes, blinded, burned, stapled, given diabetes and cancer, and infected with horrifying viruses like Ebola. Most people are shocked to learn that such abuses, when "properly conducted" in the laboratory setting, are exempt from state anti-cruelty statutes.

While every laboratory that experiments on animals other than mice, rats, and birds is licensed and inspected by the USDA and expected to adhere to the minimal standards of care as set forth by the Animal Welfare Act (e.g., proper cage size, adequate food, water, and veterinary care, etc.), funding comes from a variety of sources: gifts and grants from private individuals and foundations, donations solicited from well-intentioned but uninformed members of the public, industry money, etc. Nonetheless, the largest provider of funds for animal experimentation is the federal government. Every year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) doles out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in support of some of the most bizarre and sadistic animal experiments ever conceived. One animal experimenter at New York University (NYU) received $250,000 dollars from NIH to construct a crack pipe through which monkeys, sealed inside old refrigerators, were forced to smoke crack cocaine.

In support of those who directly profit from animal experimentation (animal dealers and shippers, laboratory-equipment makers, experimenters and the institutions that they work for, etc.) is the vivisection lobby. Working hand in hand with its supporters in industry, academia, and government, the animal experimentation lobby enjoys a self-serving steady flow of taxpayer dollars while fighting animal protection legislation at every turn. They even successfully opposed giving protection to mice, rats, and birds, claiming it would be too costly and burdensome.

The best way to tackle the vivisection industry is to demand that your alma mater stop experimenting on animals, buy those products that are cruelty-free, give only to those charities that do not experiment on animals and demand the immediate validation and implementation of humane, more effective, and readily available non-animal tests from the federal government (e.g. Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Transportation, etc.)

Please visit the following site to obtain more information. http://www.stopanimaltests.com/animalTesting101.asp


My past response to a few animal testing questions:

1)   Do you think animal testing is morally right?

No it is not morally right. Based on common physiology and behavior, it is safe to say that non human animals experience fear when their lives are threatened, pain when their bodies are mutilated, and boredom and frustration when caged for long periods of time. Nonhuman animals show they value their lives and freedom by their struggles against being caged, mutilated, and killed. Depriving them of life or freedom harms those in many of the same ways that humans are harmed when deprived of life or freedom. Because of this I am against animal testing. And it gets worse, not only do we subject animals to horrific torture but some scientists test under the guise that we are helping humans. In actually we are harming humans because of the Biological differences.

2) Do you think animal testing gives accurate results?

Animal testing doesn't make products safe. For example, according to animal tests, cigarette smoke, asbestos, arsenic, benzene, and glass fibers were all found to be safe to ingest from animal testing. Many household products, all tested on animals, are unsafe for us and our environment. And inaccuracies in cancer-causing tests occur up to 70% of the time. Animal testing only provides a legal defense for companies whose products could still harm humans. Test results are used to win lawsuits, not protect people. Some of these tests are over 50 years old and have never been required to be scientifically validated. Representatives of nine multinational companies revealed to Alan Goldberg who runs the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) that they use Petri dish or non- mammalian tests, usually involving fish or worms, to decide if a chemical is safe enough to produce. Only then do they perform the life-span feeding studies-to satisfy the company's lawyers and regulatory agencies. There is a battery of animal tests commonly required for evaluating the safety of a chemical or drug. Government regulators overwhelmingly request the traditional animal tests partly because some of the best alternatives are industry secrets but also because they trust the animal tests, which have, by and large, “protected” the public in the past.

Biological differences between and within species require scientists to proceed with caution when interpreting the results of any experiment. Animals of different ages, sexes, developmental stages, and of different health status can all respond differently to experimental treatments. It is no surprise, then, that humans respond differently to administered pharmaceuticals than other animals. The surprise comes when scientists, physicians, and regulatory officials are willing to risk the health of patients by relying on animal experiments to predict the effects of drugs in humans—sometimes with grave results.

According to some estimates, adverse drug reactions are responsible for 2.2 million hospitalizations and 106,000 human deaths annually. Furthermore, as many as 50 percent of FDA-approved drugs are withdrawn or relabeled due to unanticipated side effects in humans.  Animal testing should be abolished.

I hope this information sheds some light on the industry and my opinion of animal testing. If you have any further questions please feel free to ask me or visit the site below:

www.Stopanimaltesting.com

http://www.pcrm.org/resch/anexp/


For the animals,
Robin