Michael Harrison

Ms. Sanchez
English IV
3-31-15
Animal Rights
Many people do not realize the pain and torture that animals go through during animal
testing on a day to day basis. Approximately 6 million animals are dissected each year in schools.
The animal rights movements main goal is to stop all uses of animals that cause them pain or
death. The animal rights movement has generated much interest in animal issues due to its wellpublicized protests and campaigns. Americans against dissection in education have supported
efforts aimed at changing schools dissection rules. L.K. Currie McGhee talks about dissection
alternatives such as computer softwares and laboratory kits. Alternatives have continued to
become more common as states have enacted laws that guarantee students the right to choose
whether they want to dissect (Currie-McGhee). Animal activists in Sydney, Australia, protest
against the cramped conditions of the battery hen system when they got into an animal cage to
show the cramped conditions. According to Yolanda Brooks, Animal rights activists have gone to
the extreme to try and stop animal abuse, evening resorting to attacks on the people who abuse
the animals (Brooks). Animal experimentation should be abolished because it causes harm to the
animals, humans react different to certain things differently than animals do, and no animal
deserves to be used for entertainment or be confined in a pen.

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Animal Testing should discontinue because people do not see the harm that it causes to
animals on a day to day basis. Do animals have a soul? Do they feel pain? And do they deserve
to be treated with equal respect as humans? Before any medicine can reach drugstore shelves, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a government agency, requires that it be tested on
animals. Tests should be designed to provide clear results so that they dont need to be repeated.
Scientists should not do any research if the information can be gathered from observation alone.
Research finds that animals can feel pain, but many scientists use pain-relieving medicine during
experiments so that the animal feels as little pain as possible. When they do use animals, research
laboratories must minimize pain and distress and treat those animals humanely (Watson).
Americans believe it is acceptable for people to use animals for food, clothing, and in medical
research, they also believe that animals should be treated humanely and that the people are
responsible for reducing animals suffering whenever possible. In the past three decades, animal
rights activists have voiced their concerns by protesting against animal research facilities and
their scientists. L.K. Currie-MCGhee talks about unlawful actions caused 1.6 million dollars in
damages and the freeing of nearly five thousand animals. The majority of minks and laboratory
mice died from exposure and starvation and they get eaten by predators (Currie-McGhee).
People and scientists sometimes do not realize that animals are different than humans and
can react in different ways to different substances. Animals are not exactly that same as humans
and may not respond in the same way to treatments. Watson explains that there was a drug that
was tried on humans after they tested it on animals. It caused all the humans heads they tested
the drug on to get as big as a balloon.

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Because testing on humans is limited, there isnt good information on humans to compare
against the data from animals. Some people say that many animal tests were developed so long
ago that no one is sure whether they still work well today. Watson says that people today say that
even though humans and many animals are biologically similar, they are not exactly the same. In
recent years, the U.S. Government has gotten involved in the efforts to reduce animal testing.
The National Institutes of Health has set up a special agency to look into alternatives to animal
tests. The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods helps
approve new methods for government agencies that do animal testing (Watson). Insulin
injections for diabetes patients, chemotherapy for cancer patients, radiation therapy, and stem
cell transplants, as well as vaccines for smallpox, polio, and yellow fever were all tested on
animals before they were used on humans. If non-human animals were to be given rights
analogous to those of humans, almost all animal experimentation would become criminalized
and would cease (Rich).
People today should understand that animals should not be used for entertainment or be
confined in a pen. Vivid pictures have shown Americans the shocking conditions in which
animals lived while waiting to be sold by dealers to research labs. Europe has also passed
regulations on animal testing. Since 2003, no cosmetic can be sold in the European Union if it
contains ingredients that were tested on animals. Although many Americans say they are in favor
of using animals to test the safety of medicines and chemicals, most are against using animals to
test products that are not used for health purposes. In one study, 60 percent of people surveyed
said they opposed the use of animals in cosmetics testing, according to the Humane Society. As
mentioned previously, Europe has already begun the move to ban cosmetics testing on animals.

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Today, cosmetics companies in the United States are also phasing out animal testing. Many
companies have already stopped testing their products on animals. Some are using human
volunteers instead. In 1989, Revlon became the first cosmetics company to end all of its animal
testing. Avon and Mary Kay announced soon after that they were also ending animal testing.
Gillette stopped testing its products in 1996, and it donates $100,000 each year toward the
development of alternative testing methods. LOreal and Procter & Gamble have each spent
hundreds of millions of dollars to find alternatives to animal testing. Some companies, such as
the Body Shop and Toms of Maine, label their products as Cruelty-free, or Against animal
testing. The Body Shops Web site includes a page that describes the companys values against
animal testing. When you pick up a jar of hand lotion or a bottle of perfume and see the words
Cruelty-free, or Not tested on animals,, it may sound positive, but what do those words
really mean? The meanings are not always clear. Cruelty-free, may mean that the company uses
other methods besides animals to test its products (Watson).
I am completely against against animal testing, but here are some ways that animal
testing can help us in the future. Many people today do not realize that animal testing saves lives
and will become a major advantage throughout the future. Animal testing is necessary because it
saves lives. People must test products on animals to prevent causing harm to humans. Laws are
in place to protect animals from suffering during experiments. Many of the same diseases that
sicken humans, including heart disease and cancer, also affect animals. Today, people who are
born with diabetes can live full lives, thanks to the animals that made diabetes research and
treatment possible. The insulin itself was once taken from the pancreas of pigs and cows.
According to surveys, most people agree on the importance of animal testing. Scientists can

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study these diseases in animals to learn more about how to treat them in humans. No scientist
sets out to test medications or treatments on animals with the goal of harming the animals or
making them suffer (Watson).
There is a story that was found on The New York Times that is very informative about the
extent of animal testing. Our legal system divides the world into people and everything else.
People (and associations of people) have legal rights. Everything else does not. But should
animals or at least certain highly intelligent animals be given some of the same legal rights
as people? In December 2013, the lawyer Steven Wise showed the world how, with a little legal
jujitsu, an animal can transition from a thing without rights to a person with legal protections.
Mr. Wise has spent more than 30 years developing his strategy for attaining animal personhood
rights. The current focus of Mr. Wises legal campaign includes chimpanzees, elephants, whales
and dolphins animals whose unusually high level of intelligence has been recognized by
scientific research. Gonchar tells us that After Mr. Wise started his career as a criminal defense
lawyer, he was inspired by Peter Singers book Animal Liberation to dedicate himself to
justice for animals. According to Gonchar, Mr. Wise helped pioneer the study of animal rights
law in the 1980s. In 2000, he became the first person to teach the subject at Harvard Law School,
as a visiting lecturer. Mr. Wise began developing his animal personhood strategy after struggling
with ineffective welfare laws and regulations that fail to keep animals out of abusive
environments.
Unlike welfare statutes, legal personhood would give some animals irrevocable protections that
recognize their critical needs to live in the wild and to not be owned or abused (Gonchar).

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This fall, the cases will be likely to go to New Yorks intermediate appellate courts. If Mr. Wise
wins, he will have successfully broken down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.
His plaintiffs, the four chimps, will be deemed legal persons and relocated to outdoor sanctuaries
around the United States. They have brought animal personhood to the forefront of the
conversation surrounding our societys relationship with animals (Gonchar).
People need to see the issues going on with animal testing and why it should be
abolished. It causes harm to them, the tests can have different effects on animals versus humans,
and no animal of any kind should be locked in a pen or used for entertainment. Animal Testing
should discontinue because people do not see the harm that it causes to animals on a day to day
basis. People and scientist sometimes do not realize that animals are different than humans and
can react in different ways to different substances. People today should understand that animals
should not be used for entertainment or be confined in a pen. Many people do not realize the pain
and torture that animals go through during animal testing on a day to day basis.