In these tests, the animals have chemicals forced down their throats, into their eyes and onto their shaved skin in order to document their reaction to ensure the safe use for humans. These tests determine if these products cause general illness or health hazards like cancer or birth defects. They also conduct lethal dose tests, where the animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to see what dose can cause death. These tests can result in immense pain, distress, blindness, swollen eyes, sore and bleeding skin, internal bleeding, organ damage, birth defects, convulsions and even death in the animals.
However, there are scientists who back animal testing for cosmetics. Animal testing obviously reduces suffering for humans, which scientists feel is most important. There is also the argument that veterinary research relies on animal testing.
Animal testing has also contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments. But the fact remains, cosmetic testing is still seen as extremely inhumane and unnecessary. As of April of this year, there are many companies who still test on animals. Cosmetic companies based in the UK are typically cruelty-free, as cosmetic testing is banned there. To ensure an absolute cruelty-free cosmetics collection, always look out for the signature cruelty-free bunny logo.
Brandt, Dr. Of course this is just a fraction of the industry, but these are the most popular brands who do or do not test on animals. The best way you can help to put an end to cosmetic animal cruelty is by going cruelty-free! Beauty Picks for an Easy, Glamorous Getaway. However individuals perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies all across the country and all around the world.
Although humans often benefit from successful animal research, the pain, the suffering, and the deaths of animals are not worth the possible human benefits. Therefore, animals should not be used in research or to test the safety of products.
First, animals' rights are violated when they are used in research. Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University, states: "Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment. This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment" qtd. Animals and people are alike in many ways; they both feel, think, behave, and experience pain.
Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect as humans. Yet animals' rights are violated when they are used in research because they are not given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often painful or cause permanent damage or death, and they are never given the option of not participating in the experiment. Regan further says, for example, that "animal [experimentation] is morally wrong no matter how much humans may benefit because the animal's basic right has been infringed.
Risks are not morally transferable to those who do not choose to take them" qtd. Animals do not willingly sacrifice themselves for the advancement of human welfare and new technology. Their decisions are made for them because they cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices. When humans decide the fate of animals in research environments, the animals' rights are taken away without any thought of their well-being or the quality of their lives.
Therefore, animal experimentation should be stopped because it violates the rights of animals. Next, the pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any possible benefits to humans. Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do; in fact, their reactions to pain are virtually identical both humans and animals scream, for example.
When animals are used for product toxicity testing or laboratory research, they are subjected to painful and frequently deadly experiments.
Two of the most commonly used toxicity tests are the Draize test and the LD50 test, both of which are infamous for the intense pain and suffering they inflect upon experimental animals. In the Draize test the substance or product being tested is placed in the eyes of an animal generally a rabbit is used for this test ; then the animal is monitored for damage to the cornea and other tissues in and near the eye.
This test is intensely painful for the animal, and blindness, scarring, and death are generally the end results. The Draize test has been criticized for being unreliable and a needless waste of animal life. The LD50 test is used to test the dosage of a substance that is necessary to cause death in fifty percent of the animal subjects within a certain amount of time. To perform this test, the researchers hook the animals up to tubes that pump huge amounts of the test product into their stomachs until they die.
The research, through review and content analysis of the existing literature, compares and provides the outcomes of using animals in medical and cosmetics tests by examining studies conducted in the UK. The findings of this research indicated that animal testing is considered acceptable in the medical field only if there are no other alternatives, but is completely unacceptable in the cosmetics field. The study also provides recommendations in the form of alternatives that protect animals from cruelty and may benefit the different stakeholders and the society at large.
Throughout history, animals have been the subject of experimentation to improve our understanding of anatomy and pathology 1. However, animal testing only became significant in the twentieth century 2.
Animal experiments are used extensively when developing new medicines and for testing the safety of certain products. Recently, the use of animals for biomedical research has been severely criticized by animal rights and protection groups. Similarly, many nations have established laws to make the practice of animal testing more humane.
There are two positions in animal testing. One is that animal testing is acceptable if suffering is minimized and there are human benefits that could not have been achieved using any other means 3. The second position considers animal testing unacceptable because it causes suffering, and the benefits to human beings are either not proven or could be obtained using other methods. As such, animal testing is a highly controversial subject that often elicits conflicting emotions from supporters and critics alike.
It is also a divisive subject as some people support animal testing only in certain cases and oppose its use in other areas. For example, scientists note that significant medical breakthroughs have only been made possible through drug testing on animals. To them and other like-minded people, such achievements are reason enough to keep using animals in the lab 4.
Animal tests determine if experimental drugs are effective or ineffective on human beings. Eventually, the medicine is tried out on a small group of humans through clinical trials before declaring the medicine safe to use. Badyal and DesaI 5 note that these treatments are as beneficial to humans as they are to animals, since some human diseases are found in animals too. Therefore, some who support animal testing only advocate its use for medical but not cosmetics purposes, arguing that the advancement in human medicine may lead to advancement in animal medicine.
While a significant population completely disapproves of animal testing, a faction of people only disagrees with the use of animals for cosmetics testing, arguing that it is despicable and cruel to use animal life merely so that humans can advance their beauty technology. The concern extends to animals used for science, and people want animal suffering to be minimized 6. The discovery of new drugs has for a long time been based on a number of interactions among aspects such as data collected from patients, tissues, organs or cell culture and varied animal species 7.
Those who oppose the use of animal testing for cosmetics believe it is outrageous and cruel to use animal life for the simple reason of making humans look better, and that the benefits to human beings do not validate the harms done to animals 7. For such reasons, the use of animals for testing cosmetics products has been banned in the UK and all other member states of the European Union since 8.
However, other countries like China and the United States of America still continue with the practice 9. Linzey adds that about 50 - million animals are used for experiments every year, and that over 1. In the meantime, the number of experiments conducted on animals has declined in Britain but is increasing in other countries.
While experiments involving vertebrates are regulated in most countries, experiments on invertebrates are not 5. The aim of this study is to examine whether or not animal testing is still useful and necessary in the present time, and whether there are ethical differences between animal testing in medical and cosmetics fields.
We use the UK as our case study and provide alternatives that can be recommended in place of animal testing. This review was based on a cross-sectional survey by Clemence and Leaman 11 that analysed the importance of animal testing from two different aspects: medicine and cosmetics. The research included men and women. The report compared public views with the responses from a similar study in that had participants men and women.
The inclusion criteria were based on numerous strata such as gender, social grade definitions i. This report measured public perception on whether it is ethical to use animal testing for medical or cosmetics purposes. Participants were required to state whether they found it acceptable, mostly unacceptable, unacceptable, or were undecided. Consequently, the same participants were also tasked to indicate whether they saw conducting animal testing for scientific experimentation as completely necessary, somewhat necessary, not very necessary, completely unnecessary, or they did not know.
The study also utilized data from the UK Home Office 12 to determine which animals were most frequently used for medical and cosmetics research around the world. This report also provided crucial information as to the purposes of animal testing, for instance for medical research, biological testing, regulatory testing, etc.
According to the UK Home Office 12 , in the year , Moreover, This is summarized in Figure 1 below. Data from the UK Home Office 10 indicates that the most commonly used animals for medical and cosmetics research are mice and rabbits The summary of the results is provided in Figure 3 and Figure 4 below. The results are summarized in Figure 5 below. The sensitivity to human life, on the other hand, reduces the strictness towards utilization of animals to find anti-viruses and antibiotics for various diseases.
The outcome portrays the essentiality of using animals to determine materials that would help the population to live healthily However, in the past few decades, the number of animals used for testing drugs has been steadily decreasing The data indicates that most of the medical research processes involving animal testing emanate from genetically oriented studies, which constitute Experimentation on human genetics presents various legal and ethical challenges to medical and biological researchers, alongside problems in creating experimental procedures using human test subjects.
These problems occur partially due to the fact that the experimentation processes involved in these types of studies often lead to extensive gene and physiological damages to the test subjects. Such experiments typically involve deliberate presentation of diseases and other gene modifications to the test subjects, usually requiring the euthanizing of the involved subjects The animal testing experimentations involving genetic processes include studies in gene modification and examine diseases believed to hold genetic components, such as cancer and diabetes These experimentation processes typically involve some sort of gene modification that can simulate the presentation of genetically based disorders manifested in human beings to allow researchers to better understand those disorders.
The data also indicate that another major application of animal testing in the medical field is in basic research in biological systems and processes, which accounts for This application of animal testing in medical research involves studies in how biological systems function, and the nature and manner of disease transmission in living organisms. The findings accrued through these kinds of studies translate to advancements in the scientific knowledge of human pathology and present opportunities for the derivation and testing of cures, as noted by Festing and Wilkinson The findings further present that regulatory testing The use of animal testing for regulatory testing purposes involves applying new medical findings, procedures and products to animals to see if they meet the thresholds mandated by the medical regulatory bodies.
Translation of research findings from animals to humans involves conducting research into the possibility of animal pathogens becoming infectious to humans, and identifying potential ways of applying non-human physiology to the improvement of human health. Other forms of medical and biological trainings and studies that also engage the use of animals in experimentation in the medical field include elements such as basic physiology and pathogen studies, typically conducted in educational institutions.
Animal testing in the field of cosmetics generally involves the use of animal subjects in testing new cosmetics products and ingredients. The use of animal testing in the field of cosmetics research and production presents an unethical viewpoint since the findings do not advance human health, and the practice leads to the torture and killing of animals. The Humane Society 18 also notes that at the conclusion of the experimentation, the animals are usually killed through methods such as decapitation, neck twisting and asphyxiation, often without pain relief.
This is to justify the need for a researcher to conduct animal studies, and to ensure that the research is conducted using the smallest possible number of animals and with minimal suffering.
Additionally, Naderi et al. Furthermore, Holden 20 highlighted the fact that researchers need to justify to review and ethics committees the use of mice rather than other alternatives in experiments. These issues indicate that researchers should look for alternatives to animal testing before proceeding with animal trials.
The issue then remains on the nature and availability of alternatives to animal testing in the medical research field.
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