animal twsting
...t – most of these chemicals have already been tested. Many, like those in rat poison, are already known to be dangerous and are just being repeatedly tested because no one has bothered to collect the volumes of existing data from the different chemical manufacturers, put the information together and make it accessible. Rather than doing this, Gore wants chemicals that have been on the market for several decades, including turpentine and acetone, forced down the throats of animals. He’s even going to the extreme of suffocating fish by pouring chemicals into their water. These tests will not reveal anything new information about how these toxic chemicals affect humans. Animal tests even help manufacturers keep highly toxic substances on the market because companies can honestly claim that the results from these tests on animals do not apply to people. This is only the beginning. The Environmental Protection Agency has a list of 85,000 more chemicals it wants tested at the expense of 150 million innocent animals. (facts from Rueche) We are truly wasting valuable time, money, and resources to retest old products. Many of the tests that are conducted are just being performed so that collages, hospitals, medical schools and research institutions across America can receive their precious grants. The same experiments being done at Duke University are being conducted at UMDNJ and at Harvard. There is no current national database with this information. Research institutions do not know what each other are doing until their work is published. Many times, for reasons beyond their control, their work is never published. This is wasting valuable funds that could be used more efficiently if they worked with a combined effort and toward a common goal. Basically the different institutions are not as concerned with the research that is being conducted but with whom will publish their research first. Many people believe that the research grants are extremely scarce and that the research that is funded is worth while. This is a false assumption. Animal research receives extensive amounts of publicity and receives big grants from the government and private corporations, unlike preventative medicine. It is easy for animal researchers to devise tests that will produce large amounts of data. The fact that the information devised has no real relevance and no correlation to the human body and its diseases is not the issue here . Medical experimentation using animals provides no accurate results due to the fact that there is no direct correlation between various animal species and the human species. Even people in today’s society believe that the discovery of the polio vaccine is dependent on the experimentation on monkeys. The most important advance in the Polio vaccine took place 1949 by Enders, Weller, and Robbins. Their research showed that the Polio virus could be grown in human tissue. The three scientists were awarded the Noble Peace Prize for their excellent discovery. Despite their wonderful breakthrough, Salk and Sabin, who used monkey tissue to study the disease, are usually credited with the discovery of the vaccine. Sabin himself made an impressive argument against vivisection when he testified to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 1984 saying… “work on prevention of polio was delayed by an erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models in monkeys.” (Rueschel p 114). There are innumerable amounts of dedicated people doing everything in their power to stop unnecessary animal test such as Alex Pacheco. The founder of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Alex Pacheco, went behind the scenes of the private laboratory of Dr. Edward Taub in Silver Springs, Maryland. While working there, Alex gathered information about the private laboratory’s use of seventeen monkeys used in research experiments. The monkeys were surgically crippled and then studied in an effort to learn more about rehabilitation of humans who suffered strokes or spinal-c rod injures. Alex’s information led to the raiding of the laboratory by local police. This was the first time that police in this country ever raided a laboratory because of allegations of cruelty to animals. Dr. Taub was convicted on six of the 17 counts of cruelty,(Rueschel p.15). But those convictions were over turned by an appeals court. The Silver Springs Monkey case helped launch PETA into the leadership position of the animal...